Title – Crime 101 (2026)

Director – Bart Layton (American Animals)

Cast – Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Halle Berry, Barry Keoghan, Monica Barbaro, Nick Nolte

Plot – A collection of LA residents including high-end robber Davis (Hemsworth), grizzled police officer Lou (Ruffalo), insurance sales rep Sharon (Berry) and ruthless criminal Ormon (Keoghan) are drawn together by an impending heist that holds great ramifications for all.  

“That’s the thing about walk-away money. You have to be able to actually walk away with it”

Review by Eddie on 16/03/2026

American Animals and The Imposter director Bart Layton’s newest $90 million dollar feature has been described by many as Heat-like and Heat-lite with those tags both a blessing and a curse as Layton’s star-studded crime epic takes place across its close to two and a half hour running time.

Adapting Don Winslow’s source material, Crime 101 follows the lives of four Los Angeles residents, Chris Hemsworth’s mysterious and charisma free Davis who specialises in high end diamond heists, Halle Berry’s insurance company worker, Mark Ruffalo’s struggling police detective who is looking into Davis’s exploits across the city and Barry Keoghan’s violent petty criminal Ormon.

Filled with a moody ambience courtesy of some Michael Mann like visuals and a pulse-pounding score by composer Blanck Mass, Crime 101 feels very much like a film from yesteryear and in many ways could be described as the perfect “dad” film, offering a viewing experience that doesn’t come around that often anymore, especially via our local big screens.

Starting out in rip-roaring fashion with a white-knuckle segment where Davis acts out a daring diamond heist, Crime 101 has a lot of moments of high-class genre action that is sure to appease anyone wanting a good hearty dose of stylised cops and robbers type spectacle but the films extra luggage, including a bunch of sub-plots and characters that don’t provide much in the way of value adding do hold the film back from being what could well have been a modern day crime classic.

With its more than generous running time, Layton doesn’t always put his films minutes too good use with a range of underdeveloped and arguably unnecessary components that includes Monica Barbaro’s token love interest Maya, Corey Hawkins partner to Lou Tillman and Lou’s fed-up wife Angie (a cameo from Jennifer Jason Leigh) all not that integral to Crime 101’s success that is at its best when its focussed in on its main heist plot.

To go alongside that the film does start to ask the audience to suspend their disbelief more and more as the films twisting and turning plot unfolds while it’s hard to feel too much for Hemsworth’s wet blanket of a main character with Davis not doing a lot to make us feel much in the way of empathy or interest, continuing on the Australian ex-pats role struggles outside of his hit turns as everyone’s favourite God of Thunder.

Clearly a flawed exercise, there’s still lots of fun to be had from this old-school throwback, proving once again that the age-old formula of exploring the lives of crooks living life on the edge while those everyday chumps try and halt them in their tracks is still a winning narrative foundation and with its lavish budget and smooth delivery, Crime 101 is still a great night out/in for anyone looking for the newest dose of Hollywood thrills.

Final Say –

Overreaching at times and losing marks for an increasingly far-fetched plot, Crime 101 is still an above average heist thriller that overcomes some forgettable central characters to provide a sleek iteration of the classic Heat experience.

3 1/2 Chrysler 300’s out of 5