“Crime 101” boasts a solid genre pedigree: The film is based on a novella by the best-selling author Don Winslow, and its director is Bart Layton, of the acclaimed con-man documentary “The Imposter” (2012). But the auteur by proxy is clearly Michael Mann, to whom this crime saga owes a debt so immense that it’s hard not to come away feeling that the movie itself is stolen goods. Instead of Mann’s “Heat,” it is something like “Reheated.”
But like lovingly warmed leftovers, it has its satisfactions: a charismatic cast, evocative Los Angeles location work, the sort of granular details on diamond couriering and insurance valuation that might give impressionable viewers ideas. The “101” of the title refers not only to a how-to of robbery but also to the California freeway, the favored getaway route of the story’s principal thief.
That thief calls himself Mike (Chris Hemsworth), and he is a meticulous loner who lives in what might as well be the same ocean-view pad that Robert De Niro used in “Heat.” (Like De Niro’s character, he fills the space with as few identifying items as possible.) Layton gives Mike a bracing introduction, trailing him through the well-timed process of a jewelry robbery — which involves, among other things, briskly kidnapping a man at an entrance-ramp stoplight before the crack of dawn.
Mike doesn’t like to hurt people, though, and his main foil, a detective, Lou (Mark Ruffalo), is catching on to that modus operandi. Ruffalo, it should be said, played a detective in Mann’s “Collateral,” and as in that film, his character has a theory that none of his colleagues buy. He believes that a single mastermind is responsible for a string of robberies along the 101. Lou’s superior chews him out for even raising the idea. Arresting multiple suspects is better for clearance rates.
The X factor linking the men is Sharon (Halle Berry), a claims adjuster at an exclusive insurance company whose ageist and sexist boss continually declines to make her partner. Layton’s admirably patient screenplay brings Sharon first into Lou’s orbit — the two of them are investigating the same diamond theft — then into Mike’s.
Sharon explains that appraising costs is only part of her job. She also has to assess her clients’ propensities for risky behavior. She sizes up Mike’s perfectionist streak quickly. But Mike is surrounded by unpredictable types: a mentor (Nick Nolte) who thinks Mike has gone soft; a vicious, incautious rival (a bleach-haired Barry Keoghan, a compellingly feral presence in the movie’s otherwise neatly ordered universe); and a love interest (Monica Barbaro, in the Amy Brenneman role from “Heat”) who bristles at his secrecy.
The tension rarely ebbs — an extended chase between Keoghan’s hothead and Mike is a standout — but “Crime 101” can’t quite pull off the sweep or scope it seeks. Some of that is because of inconsistent follow-through. Payman Maadi (from “A Separation”) appears as a downtown diamond dealer who is accused of being an accomplice, then more or less dropped from the film. As Lou’s estranged wife, Jennifer Jason Leigh turns up for a mere two scenes, one of which also shortchanges the location, the great Los Angeles pastrami purveyor Langer’s, passed off as just another diner.
Then there is the nagging sense that everything here is secondhand, whether it is the psychology of Hemsworth’s monomaniacal, emotionally recessive protagonist or the aerial views of nocturnal Los Angeles, whose lights look significantly duller than in “Collateral.” Layton ultimately lacks Mann’s cynicism. In keeping with the motivational talks that Sharon listens to, and that frame the film, the movie ultimately proves to be less a guide to criminality than a manual for self-help.
Crime 101 Rated R. Lawlessness. Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes. In theaters.
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