“Crime 101”

by Chris Stewart 03.2026

Truman Capote wrote of murderer Perry Smith: “It was as if we were born in the same house and one day I went out the front door and he went out the back”. Since then (and before) we've seen the twinning of cops and crooks in literature and movies. How few sliding doors it takes to separate the two. The meticulousness required of each. The dogged trust in self. A code.

One's entry point for enjoying a cops-and-robbers film will depend on what they want from it. Is it purely the promise of a set piece every 7-8 minutes? Or rather Elmore Leonard's chatty, discursive lowlife wits? The tier to which Crime 101 aspires is decidedly more poetic, and fundamentally sober. It escapes the full-on grim indulgence of The Town or We Own The Night (its secret sauce is actually a strange, very beach-focused optimism); it is nonetheless aiming to show us how the underworld works. Frankly, those films at least know how to locate basic tragic momentum. Not to mention when to trim a dialogue scene.

None of this prevents tried and true moments from landing in this handsomely filmed, sincerely performed film. To begin: an ornate opening heist is a good way to spend fifteen minutes in a cinema seat. Chris Hemsworth swallows up more feelings (and initial consonant blends) than Tom Hardy. Mark Ruffalo is effortless as a cop who's smile suggests he just heard back from his doctor and the ulcer is getting worse. Halle Berry is not only welcome, but as crisply commanding as ever. Need a squirrely biker to represent the one thing romantic crime characters are afraid of - someone who behaves like an actual criminals? Barry Keoghan is ready to menace, smirk, pout, and fisticuff with the best of them.

These pleasures are here; in full cinematic scale. Director Bart Layton has his heart in the right place. He is capable of the muscular, point-counterpoint maneuvering we want in a film like this. Ditto with capturing Los Angeles. Less helpful are familiar, extended beats (do we need four scenes of people telling Ruffalo he's too obsessed with his theory?). Rather than a neatly-woven series of interlocking lives in the city, we have an overstuffed triptych.

When they finally overlap, in a way that should be thrilling but instead is only fitfully stirring, we do not feel ourselves hurtling towards the inevitable. Rather, we begin to wonder just how prolonged karma will be for each broken darling on this island of misfit toys. The answer? Much too long, and also, without real gut or insight.

You've read all of this and still feel up for it? You know who you are. It's a solid, sometimes poignant crime film. Strap in, throw on a Leonard Cohen song, enter the lonely place, and admire Crime 101; watered down, stretched out, and trying its best – and partly succeeding -  to make a warm, familiar omelet without so much as a single bit of eggshell on the ground.