'Crime 101' Checks Hollywood's Gut Health
- August Hammel
- Mar 2
- 4 min read
The dad movie is a thing of beauty. A souffle of modern cinema, the dad movie is an ethereal catch-all term for those movies, junky and prestigious alike, whose ethos inspire the image of a lazy Sunday with a cold-to-lukewarm beer in hand. Despite a very recent legacy of breezy dad staples like Den of Thieves (2018) and The Amateur (2025), it’s a shame that Crime 101 (2026) never realizes its potential as such.
Bart Layton’s nearly decade-later follow-up to hybrid docu-drama American Animals is a star-studded crime drama, as one might infer from the too-sweaty title, and functions as a somewhat failed check-up on Hollywood’s gut health. The act of packing a schlocky script with an ensemble of A-listers used to be one of Hollywood’s–easiest and best moves, an old reliable known in the business as a “programmer”. When a pitch this surefire can’t escape the listless and droning mediocrity that plagues studio filmmaking today, something is amiss.
Crime 101 tracks Mike (Chris Hemsworth), a non-violent jewel thief with a heart of gold, as he plans one last hit before he can walk away for good. Assisting him is Sharon (Halle Berry), an insurance broker at wit’s end, while his handler (Nick Nolte) acts as a two-faced foil and aims to replace him with a far more wiry thief (Barry Keoghan). Little does Mike know that Detective Lou Loubesnick (Mark Ruffalo) is hot on his trail after realizing – wow – that all of his crimes take place along the 101 highway.
What initially registers as a meat-and-potatoes premise evolves into a self-conscious web of plot threads that overcompensates on double-cross formulas at the expense of otherwise welcome simplicity, all the more deflating for its lack of assured actioner confidence that a movie like this needs. Layton knows his way around a set piece – a car/motorcycle chase around the midpoint is a thrilling showcase for tangibly real stunts and propulsive camerawork – but he can’t rev up the energy necessary to enliven his overstuffed ensemble and their thinly sketched motivations.
Chris Hemsworth has been on a wild ride for the last decade. After taking a few leaps out of the franchise bullpen with projects like Michael Mann’s Blackhat and Ron Howard’s Rush and In the Heart of the Sea, Hemsworth has found himself basking in the safety of Marvel and the streamers through multiple Thor, Avengers and Extraction films. Layton is asking something more of Hemsworth; Mike is meant to be a kind and somewhat meek – read, pacifist – thief in the face of a violent world. Hemsworth doesn’t fit. His steely blues and literal Norse build were effective in his mid-2010s performances, but he was often being maneuvered around by more seasoned directors.
Layton’s steady but unremarkable direction can’t wrangle Hemsworth’s stardom into a new shape, one that this role requires, which is an even greater shame in light of George Miller’s maneuver in his fast-forgotten Furiosa (2024)– which is arguably the Aussie’s best performance to date. There, his bountiful charm was weaponized against the film’s heroine and its audience instead of being watered down to fit into a glass already overfilling.
Ostensibly encoded in most audiences’ perception of this movie is some anticipatory glee for the Avengers reunion between Hemsworth and Ruffalo. Friends from work, Thor and Hulk, are now at odds as robber and cop. There’s fun to be had here, but Layton prolongs their meeting for far too long in an attempt to mimic the tension mined from not letting Al Pacino and Robert De Niro share the screen in Heat (1995) for what feels like ages. Yet, the magic of that film’s iconic diner scene came from the duo never having shared screen time before. Here, we have a whole franchise to point to. In any case, it’s Ruffalo and Berry’s looser performance styles that gift the film a pulse, as they are visibly more comfortable in their roles than stiff Hemsworth and Keoghan’s now predictable unpredictability.
Beyond the above-the-title players, the ensemble is tricky: Academy Award nominees Nolte, Monica Barbaro and Jennifer Jason Leigh are all relegated to plot devices and functionaries, none of whom are allowed to make an impression outside of the information necessitated by their characters’ existences. In some ways, this is a casual flex, but Layton’s film doesn’t have the bravura of a Marty Supreme or your average Wes Anderson joint wherein A-listers can flicker in and out of frame with a moment’s notice. There, it’s a real joy to watch Scarlett Johansson or Bryan Cranston swoop in for ten punchy lines with an exclamation point! Here, the film feels adrift amid previous drafts, whittled down to a still bloated 140 minutes without enough focus.
Somewhere in the bush lies a moderately interesting movie about people being pushed to their limit by a harsh and unforgiving world. At least, this is what the opening act and finale seem to get at in generously satisfying bursts. In between, Layton’s script zigs and zags between wispy notions of grandeur for both narrative and character. Barbaro really pulls the short stick here as Hemsworth’s thankless love interest, though she inserts enough charm to make her scenes not feel so throwaway. Layton’s self-assured craft tries to do the same, but is often misapplied as his slick tricks, from door-mounted cameras to sly editing winks, only signify a competence warranting a better film.
Crime 101 is a mostly innocent case of grand misapplication. A script this functional either needs a showman or journeyman, but Layton falls somewhere in between. It’s an admirable show of affection for the programmer, yet there’s not enough behind the curtain to feel confident about its return. Maybe dads will feel different when they see it, either in a theater today or whenever it crosses their algorithm on the Prime Video backlog. Maybe when traffic is slow enough to bask in.
Crime 101 is now playing everywhere.
-August
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