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Go behind the scenes of Crime 101 with stars Chris Hemsworth, Halle Berry and Mark Ruffalo
Featurette: MGM

Crime 101
Directed by Bart Layton
Rated R
Followed 13 February 2026
#Crime101

This crime spree’s final con leaves the audience as the victim.

Case Closed

Some movies take a little more time to sink in; as the notes are reviewed and the dots are connected, there’s a greater appreciation for what the movie has to offer. Charli xcx’s mockumentary, The Moment, is a recent example of a quirky movie that benefited from the retrospection.

On the flip side, there are movies like Crime 101, which rapidly deteriorates even while exiting the theatre.

This is a movie that has a lot going for it during the bulk of its rather hefty 140-minute run time. It features a great cast, including Mark Ruffalo as Lou, a Columbo-like gumshoe who drives a jalopy and dresses to unimpress. On the other side of the crime tape is a guy named Davis, played by Ruffalo’s fellow Avenger, Chris Hemsworth, who might not be the best choice to play an introverted, obsessive-compulsive nice guy with a beautiful mind for crime. There’s also a surprise appearance by Nick Nolte (yeah, he’s still alive) as a thug called Money, a duplicitous con who feeds Davis some lucrative gigs.

Others, such as Monica Barbaro as Maya, a down-to-earth gal who’s a potential love interest for Davis, are great to have around, but their characters are questionable.

That’s where the retrospection starts to chip away at Crime 101’s value proposition.

Sure, the title’s clever. Crime 101 isn’t a college course. It’s a reference to a series of thefts linked along California’s 101 freeway.

The movie goes old school in many of its sensibilities. The targets of the crimes are tangible assets, including diamonds and paintings. There’s also the classic duffle bag o’ cash. The technology is almost exclusively consumer-friendly: smartphones and apps. None of the people on either side of the crime could be considered a certifiable genius. Nobody talks about crypto. Let’s rephrase that: it’s likely none of these characters understand crypto.

And the pace is a really slow burn. This isn’t an action movie, but it is a movie with a couple chase scenes. That’s about it for the “action.”

All of that is meant to be complimentary.

Buddy System

Writer/director Bart Layton, perhaps best known for American Animals on the big screen and episodes of Locked Up Abroad on the small screen, based his Crime 101 screenplay on a novella by Don Winslow, whose adaptation catalog includes Oliver Stone’s Savages.

As the story unfolds, the movie introduces a large cast of characters and a tease their lives will be intertwined. Unbeknownst to them, at times their paths cross in traffic as each goes about their individual daily grind.

It’s all part of some sort of grand setup, or so it seems.

And that’s where Crime 101 ultimately gets unmasked as a fraud.

Lou is taking a lot of heat from his law enforcement colleagues; he’s bringing down the curve on closed cases as he remains fixated on a particular string of crimes in which no one is hurt. Incredibly valuable (and portable) property is swiped, but no one’s injured. It’s a casual comment made to Lou by Sharon (Halle Berry) – a high-end insurance agent – that sets Lou on a new path to solve the crimes.

There is a pattern that complements Davis’ modus operandi.

Throw in another character – an ill-tempered biker named Ormon (Barry Keoghan) – and the tapestry is virtually complete. Ormon is Money’s minion who inadvertently brings it all to a head.

The detective work and the shady dealings of Lou’s fellow cops – planting a gun in a dead thief’s hand, for example – demonstrates the hostile work environment clamping down on Lou’s plodding process. Sharon feeds Lou a new path to investigate – and a new heist that’s going down – in part as revenge for not getting her partner promotion at work. She’s told the magic number is 53. Her age. A younger female agent has swooped in and closed a deal Sharon was circling slowly. No amount of mindfulness mantras (“Create all that you desire out of nothing”) or yoga exercises are going to extinguish Sharon’s desire for some sort of revenge.

Overcooked

All of the elements are there as that slow boil seems to be simmering and steeping and starting to whistle its way to some sort of a twist ending.

Well, from a certain point of view, it is a twist ending.

But of the worst variety.

Throw out the low-grade grit (the bulk of which is courtesy of Keoghan’s unlikable and extremely violent lackey). Throw out the questionable relationships. (Is Maya legit or is she in on any of this malarkey?) Throw out Lou’s quasi-Javert-meets-Columbo approach to crime solving. Forget that Money (the character, not the financial device) had anything to do with any of this.

It all simmers down to a Hollywood ending for this crime spree dotting the greater metropolitan Los Angeles area.

It doesn’t fit.

It doesn’t satisfy.

The sense is the ending is supposed to be a crowd-pleaser. It’s supposed to be the kind of ending that engenders smiles as loose ends are tied up in favor of fresh starts.

None of it is satisfying as any sort of comeuppance for anybody. Instead, the ending aggravates.

• Originally published at MovieHabit.com.

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