The qualities of the classic adult crime and heist thriller have felt a bit more underappreciated as mid-budget films have waned. Sure, there are still plenty that are made or technically fit into those genre confines, but we only get ones that have that true classic 90’s feel to them in smaller doses today. In that way, Crime 101 is the perfect brew of the best version of this type of movie, fully embracing its roots as Michael Mann lite, and director Bart Layton knows how to evoke positive homage without delving fully into being derivative.
All the ingredients are present in spades: a slick look, kinetic camera movements, pulse-pounding heists and car chases. But the finishing touch of the meal is the moral quandaries and challenges tangling all these storylines together. It’s clear inspiration from the classic Mann films like Heat and Thief will be a deterrent for some, but Layton crafts a smooth enough thrill ride that makes great use of all the elements it has to play with, resulting in a rock-solid crowd pleaser, and it rips.
From its opening shots showcasing the bright car lights and winding roads of LA, Crime 101 starts getting us well acquainted with our leads, with Mike Davis (Chris Hemsworth) at the center of this web. Mike is a thief with a certain set of rules while executing his heist along the iconic 101 Los Angeles freeway. He’s able to use certain hacking tricks to know where his hauls are located, conducts through steps to make sure he’s not followed, and never hurts anyone while collecting his scores.
After his latest diamond heist has some incredibly close calls, he decides to take a bit of a break to plan a job that will hopefully be his last and finally get him to where he sees fit for someone who has struggled throughout most of his youth. He soon crosses paths with insurance broker Sharon (Halle Berry), who has her own battle against a system that wants to push her out because of her age, and she sees the recent injustices done against her as a breaking point to get her to aid Mike as an inside collaborator.
With LAPD led by Detective Lubesnick (Mark Ruffalo) getting closer to uncovering Mike’s operations and a wildcard bikerider (Barry Keoghan), who seems to have no moral code whatsoever, thrown into the mix, it’s a collision course through the streets of LA where each character has their own potential breaking point.
It’s important for the locales of most heist films like Crime 101 to have a clean look to match the ever-present folds that occur throughout the two-hour-plus runtime, and Bart Layton delivers on some elegant visuals. From the moment the film starts, all the streets and scenery of LA have so much life to them: the flashing lights of the many cars on long stretches of road, the swift cuts between heists that give the film a transfixing mood you can’t look away from—it’s all incredibly crafted.
So many frames of the film play with the camera in such fun ways, showcasing reflections that act as neat visual touches and inner metaphors for the inner turmoil of each character and how differently they go about their way of what they believe are the limits of crime. The car/bike chases in the film are so stirring, mounting cameras on car doors before setting up the tension tracking shots that follow the zooming action and practical crashes so seamlessly. You feel every veer and pedal push along a chase in this film, and while there’s not an ultra stylization to the visuals, they’re tight and compact enough to aid the overall style of the film, with the thumping synth score from Blanck Mass capturing the mood of the classic dad core thrills so well.
The film’s toggling within the limits of characters is admittedly even more similar to the works of Mann than the film’s look, but enough is done within the character work to still make it stand out as its own LA crime saga. It’s great how much you can tell about each lead character here in their section of the story, whilst knowing they all want the same goal of escaping what they deem failure in their lives, and the performances only bolster that.
Hemsworth is solid as a mystery man who has more layers of depth peeled from him as the story goes on. Ruffalo and Keoghan are good as the relentless cop and unpredictable foil to our leads’ morals, respectively, but Halle Berry is exceptional and the standout here. She delivers a monologue near the film’s end that is so powerful that it makes her arc particularly stand out from the rest. To an extent, there’s almost too much going on character-wise in this world, considering performers like Monica Barbaro and Corey Hawkins have roles that are present but not as fully utilized as the film seems to think, but they still fit the puzzle of Crime 101’s plotlines well enough.
Crime 101’s foundation might be heavily borrowed, but it knows how to act as an ode to the Mann and Soderbergh crime sagas of old, whilst still providing its own slick look and captivating characters to more than warrant its extended runtime. A good old-fashioned crime thriller with the heist, character exchanges, and chase sequences to match, and it rules.
Crime 101 will debut exclusively in theaters on February 13, 2026, courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios.
Crime 101’s foundation might be heavily borrowed, but it knows how to act as an ode to the Mann and Soderbergh crime sagas of old, whilst still providing its own slick look and captivating characters to more than warrant its extended runtime. A good old-fashioned crime thriller with the heist, character exchanges, and chase sequences to match, and it rules.
Lover of film writing about film. Member of the Dallas Fort-Worth Critics Association. The more time passes, the more the medium of movies has become deeply intertwined with who I am.
