Crime Doesn't Play
Crime 101 is a stylized heist film, set in Los Angeles, with a thief and the cop investigating him constantly circling one another until they finally meet. Meanwhile, the thief gets a girlfriend and wonders if he can balance his criminal lifestyle with a relationship. If you can get past that, it rips off Michael Mann’s Heat in many ways, large and small; this is an outstanding crime film.
Heat, which turned 30 years old in 2025, is influential and often imitated. The Den of Thieves films are also marked by their obvious Heat influence, and their popularity as Netflix staples likely justified Crime 101’s existence, though it’s an Amazon project. Crime 101, though, is considerably better than either Den of Thieves—for one thing, it was actually shot in Los Angeles.
In Crime 101, Chris Hemsworth plays Mike, a thief who executes a series of heists, always within proximity of L.A.’s 101 freeway, hence the title. Mike’s extremely careful, meticulous in planning, and is never violent to anyone. He stumbles into a promising romance with a young publicist (the appealing Monica Barbaro, in the Amy Brenneman part), who gets quickly frustrated that he won’t answer any questions about his past or what he does for a living. Mark Ruffalo plays a rumpled cop. His boss doesn’t respect him and can’t wait to take his badge and gun, he drives a shitty car, and his wife (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is about to leave him. But he has a theory of the case that’s basically right.
Barry Keoghan is the Waingro of the piece, a psychopathic rival thief, sporting a motorcycle helmet, who’s not the slightest bit careful or non-violent. He and Mike work for a crime boss, played with lots of grunts by Nick Nolte. Most movies about heists ignore the insurance aspects, but Crime 101 makes it a big part of the story, with Halle Berry playing an insurance company employee, also disrespected at work, who’s drawn into the plot.
Based on a novella by Don Winslow, the crime novelist, perhaps best known for being annoying on Twitter, Crime 101 was written and directed by Bart Layton, a British filmmaker, with documentaries like The Imposter and the doc/fiction hybrid American Animals. The director, with cinematographer Erik Wilson, shows a keen eye for photographing Los Angeles, no attempt to hide the Michael Mann influence. And that extends to the plot—after 90 minutes of lifting from Heat, it becomes a homage to a different Mann film, Collateral, with a nerve-wracking car ride from LAX.
Chris Hemsworth hasn’t made much of an impression on me outside of the MCU; I’ve heard people praise those Extraction movies, but I don’t get the appeal. But this is probably my favorite non-Thor role of his to date. Ruffalo plays an even more sad-sack version of his cop from HBO’s Task, while Berry gets her meatiest role in some time. The supporting cast gets lots to do, with Keoghan playing another psycho, and Tate Donovan having fun as an obnoxious rich guy.
Crime 101 is the most enjoyable movie of the new year so far.