Crime 101

I knew Bart Layton from American Animals, but here he's breathed a completely different soul into the heist genre. Hemsworth's Davis carries such profound exhaustion beneath that charisma, such meticulously crafted solitude, that you find yourself rooting for him even as he cracks safes. Berry's Sharon demolishes the 'female lead' label; she's neither a sidekick nor a prize. She's as fractured as Davis, as relentless as Lubesnick. But the gut punch is Ruffalo's detective. A man slowly devoured by his own obsession while chasing justice. All three feel like contemporary wreckage of the Robin Hood myth. There's that line from Layton's interview—'everyone is grappling with the gray area'—and you spend the entire film trying to breathe inside that gray space. They call it a heist movie, but it's really about three people confronting their own darkness. I spent 140 minutes questioning who's the hero and who's the villain. I still don't have an answer. Maybe there isn't one.