Crime 101

A meticulous thief plans one last big score, crossing paths with a disillusioned insurance broker and a younger and more violent thief, all as a determined police detective closes in.

In the city of Los Angeles, Mike is a disciplined lone wolf jewel thief who pulls carefully planned, high risk, big money, smash-and-grab heists, and then uses the 101 to quickly flee the scene. But lately, he’s starting to think about getting out of the life. This is understandable, as it’s very dangerous. On his most recent job, a $3 million diamond heist where he ambushed the couriers, he only managed to avoid getting shot by sheer luck.

But maybe that’s all just a pipe dream. After all, Mike has no life outside of this. All he does is plan the job, execute the job, and then plan the next one.

Maybe he can’t do anything else.

Still, he’s shaken, so when he meets with his fence to sell the diamonds, a man known as Money, he decides to calls off his next job, a robbery in Santa Barbara. Money has been working with Mike for a long time–in fact, his MO might be that he finds and grooms troubled young men into a life of crime–and he is upset to hear this, after all, the job is already all set up and ready to go. So Money enlists a volatile young theif named Ormon—who looks like Christian Slater in the movie Gleaming The Cube—and puts him on Mike’s Santa Barbara job.

Meanwhile, schlubby LAPD Detective Lou Lubesnick immediately links the diamond theft to his favorite theory involving a string of unsolved robberies. He attributes this robbery to a mysterious figure that he refers to as “the 101 Robber,” due to how each one happens within close proximity of the 101 freeway. Detective Lubesnick’s theory is that the 101 Robber commits his robber, and then uses the 101 to quickly drive away.

His theory is dismissed out of hand.

For reasons that are never quiet clear beyong Lou being "one of the good ones" or maybe because he's so schlubby, the LAPD brass thinks Lou sucks. As a result, the LAPD find the idea that a lone criminal is pulling these robberies and then driving away on the freeway to be absolutely ludicrous. Ludicrous!

Meanwhile, Mike is preparing another heist. He pays a hacker to bring him information on Sharon, a high-end insurance broker. Long undervalued by, and growing increasingly frustrated with, the bros and dickheads and pick-me girls at the high-end insurance firm that she works at, Sharon is made even more upset when a lucrative deal with a wealthy douchebag named Steven Monroe is taken from her and given to a newer, younger, and supposedly "hotter" colleague.

Meanwhile, Ormon carries out the Santa Barbara job, but he is so bad at it. He comes within a hair’s breadth of killing multiple people after flipping out due to various unforeseen snags that occur during the attempt. When Mike hears about this, he cuts ties with Money. Money is so mad about this, he puts Ormon on Mike’s tail, and instructs him to intercept Mike's next heist.

Meanwhile, Mike is lonely, and he has grown tired of unreliable sex workers. So when he is rear-ended by a random woman named Maya, he uses the car accident as a meet-cute. Despite the fact that Mike is a giant weirdo, who can barely carry on a conversation, and seems to have nothing in common with her, not to mention a "creepy homeschool kid" lack of familiarity with pop culture, and zero interests to speak of, or at least, none that he’s willing to share with her, and what little she does know about him could legitimately point to him being either a serial killer, a creepy incel, or possibly Batman, Maya continues to date him, and eventually she sleeps with him too, because, well… Mike looks like Chris Hemsworth. In between the times when he’s proving to Maya that he is indeed worthy, Mike makes a pitch to Sharon be his inside woman on jobs, so that together they would be able to target her high-end clients.

Sharon turns him down. She's "one of the good ones" too.

Meanwhile, because Ormon is a stupid moron who is bad at everything, Mike realizes that Ormon is following him almost immediately, and easily shakes the dummy off his tail. Unfortunately, this only sends Ormon after Mike’s hacker, who points him at Sharon, but Mike spots him again. This leads to a chase through the streets of LA, where Mike confronts Ormon and tells him to back off, realizing at the same time that Money has turned on him.

Meanwhile, Detective Lubenick is busy separating from his unfaithful wife, so he moves to the beach and joins a yoga class. Sharon is in the same yoga class, and it wasn’t clear to me whether this was a coincidence, or if Lubenick is tailing Sharon because he has somehow connected her to the 101 Robber. He also finds the car Mike used in the opening scene diamond robbery. Inside, forensics find a trace of blood that leads them to Mike's juvenile record, and his birth name, James Davis. Detective Lubenick is suspended for refusing to help cover up an inept cop's idiot lack of training, leading to the shooting of a different jewel thief, but he continues his investigation into the 101 Robber anyway, tracking down Mike's foster mother, and having her call him.

Mike realizes the noose is getting tighter, and time is running out.

But then, after being denied yet another promotion, and realizing that she is getting older, Sharon decides to help Mike after all. She provides him with inside information on an illicit diamond deal being done by one of her firm’s clients, the previously mentioned wealthy douchebag client, Steven Monroe, at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. It is a deal worth at least 11 million dollars, of which she demands a 3 million dollar cut.

Everything seems to be on track...

But then Ormon ambushes Sharon at home and viciously interrogates her, and she spills the beans about Mike. She then turns to Lou for help, admitting everything, and Lou agrees to help her. Then she quits her job after telling off her asshole boss. Also, Maya dumps Mike, his weirdness finally outweighing his handsomeness.

Finally, it’s the day of the big heist. There’s a briefcase of diamonds at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, and Mike and Ormon are both after it, and Detective Lubenick is looking to stop them. Who will get the diamonds? Who will get away clean? And who will get the Hard Goodbye...?

I did not like this movie.

What’s weird is, at first glance at least, Crime 101 seems like it’s going to be impressive. You could even say the main cast is… marvelous. Chris Hemsworth is more than worthy, and is a much better actor than I think most people assume. He’s joined in this film by fellow founding member Avenger, Mark Ruffalo, as well as the also great Barry Keegan, best known as one of the Eternals, and Halle Berry too, who is not only an Oscar winner, but a member of the X-Men. Plus, the film is based on a novella of the same name by the best-selling author Don Winslow, and its director is Bart Layton, who made The Imposter, that con-man documentary. It has two really great car chases, low and fast and fun, and LA is shot with obvious love, especially at night. It’s absolutely gorgeous.

So at first glance, you'd think... this might be good.

But it's not.

Crime 101 is a film that is all style and no substance. Everything here feels secondhand, like it's crime movie fanfic, nothing but a rehash of better films. In a nutshell, it's a movie about a thief that is nothing but stolen goods. Bullitt is an obvious touchstone, as is The Thomas Crown Affair, but so is Thief. I mean the huge debt this film owes to Michael Mann is undeniable. Because Crime 101 is nothing more than a poorly resleeved lesser version of Heat. Call it “Reheated” maybe. Hemsworth is in the De Niro role as an exceptional thief , but instead of being a loner, a pragmatist, and a perfectionist, he’s just a big weirdo. Ruffalo, meanwhile, plays the Pacino role, the dedicated cop who is chasing Hemsworth's De Niro, but instead of him being a doggedly determined cowboy, he’s just doing more of a Columbo riff.

Meh, instead of Hoo-Ah!

Plus, the film does a bunch of things that annoy me, like… putting people in the trunk of cars during jobs, all with zero acknowledgment that modern cars all have interior trunk latches now. Or how they make a show of Mike preparing for his job, scrubbing his body so as to not leaving behind any potential forensic traces, and yet… he doesn’t wear a mask most of the time.

Plus, I hate these crime movies that want to add in a ”moral lesson” at the last minute. Like we haven‘t just spent two hours or more watching a story where the main criminal may be a hitman, or a thief, or a part of a bank robbing crew or something, but was clearly positioned as the righteous point of view the whole, but then despite this, the film ends with fucking over our “heroes” amid a bunch of 11th hour moralizing, like it's the crime version of the Hook Hand Killer story.

It’s so boring.

Or worse, the main character may survive, they may get out, but they’re not allowed to be enriched… why? What’s the point in that? Do they think that this makes for a satiafying watch? What are we supposed to glean from that? Oh, is crime bad? Really? Is it? It’s so boring! Like we’re supposed to pretend that we weren’t rooting for the main characters the whole time, and that “the law” should win. Especially when the whole time, the main characters have been pitted against corporations or rich douchebags or some monstrous asshole?

Fuck you.

And that’s this film, a bunch of 11th hour moralizing before wrapping it all up with the most asinine and nonsensical ending I’ve ever seen.

Spoilers, obviously…

But the ending of the film is riddled with holes. Riddled with holes! And in much the same way that Mike keeps putting people in the trunk of his car, and then they stay there, even though trunks have interior latches. For instance, the film acts like the result of the big heist is this perfect crime, but… what happened to the courier at the airport? And wouldn’t Antwerp notice that they were never paid for the real diamonds? Or are we supposed to believe that the douchebag would just pay twice and shrug? And wouldn’t the jeweler setting the bridal gifts tell the douchebag guy that the diamonds were fake? And what was someone like Sharon supposed to do with $5.5 million dollars worth of hot diamonds? Does she know a fence? I would think probably not, because she was such a goody-goody otherwise, so where does a normal everyday “law abiding” person sell $5.5 million worth of stolen diamonds that they don’t want to pay taxes on, let alone explain how they got them? Simply put, she can't, so those diamonds are basically worthless, they might as well be the fake ones. On top of that, how is a suspended cop supposed to sell his share of the stolen diamonds, especially when he is currently suspended from his job? Plus, in the film, he clearly says that as a kid, he always wanted a 1968 Ford Mustang GT Fastback, so why is a 1968 Chevrolet Camaro a good gift? So, it’s not only NOT his dream car, but he has to pay car insurance on a fully restored ’68 Camaro? Thanks, I guess. And where was Maya even going at the end of the film? She gets the photo of Mike as a kid in the mail at her office, and she gets up from her desk and starts walking out of the office like she was going to go outside to discover that Mike was waiting outside for her or something, but the movie ended before she even left the actual office, let alone before she actually saw Mike! All we see is that she stands up from her desk, and starts walking out of the office, with the old photo, notably without her coat or purse… why? And worst of all, what does the end mean for Mike? He didn’t get his big payday, so is he going to keep doing robberies?

I did not like this movie.

It’s bad. It’s nice looking fluff that ends with a big old dumb turd.

Plus, if your female lead’s arc is that she turns to crime after a long list of professional disappointments is capped off by her boss telling her that she was getting too old, and that her time at the firm was limited because she wasn’t pretty enough anymore, then you really should not cast Halle Berry in that role.