Crime 101 is a pleasure. Everyone in it is very nice, though, which is perhaps a sickness afflicting contemporary big-budget cinema (this was my friend Jason’s complaint about both last year's Superman and the recent Fantastic Four reboot). In any case, everyone’s niceness makes everything feel just a bit less dangerous than things ought to feel.
I liked the Michael Mann of it all—this is very much in the vein of L.A. Takedown if not exactly Heat—and of course I loved how much Los Angeles was involved in this. And this is also an eighties movie in a lot of ways. The eighties are back: How to Make a Killing, which isn't even remotely as fun or good as Crime 101 also feels very '80s.
We really should talk about how bad the title Crime 101 is, though. It's a pun on the 101 freeway, and you only really get that if you watch the film, and even then it's not a clever pun, more like a dad joke. And if you're gonna go generic, why not Grand Larceny or Million Dollar Heist. Ok, those are bad too. But Crime 101 makes it feel like we're here for Lessons in Crime, and that's just not what this movie is.
In any case, the highlight here are the car chases. There are two really excellent car sequences. The cast is great all around, with an especially weird and cool performance by Barry Keoghan, who always makes things feel more unpredictable and unhinged.
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