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Crime 101

                                               

                                                      3 Stars out of 4


                                             

 This movie certainly has an interesting mix of actors. It’s like taking several really disparate ingredients that no one would think to put together, but still making it into a really good dish. You think of Nick Nolte, Halle Berry, Mark Ruffalo, Barry Keoghan, and Chris Hemsworth, and they all conjure up a thought about what kind of movie this is going to be.

But somehow, they all work well together here.

Ruffalo is having a bit of a moment now. He recently starred in Task, about a priest turned detective who had some sympathy for the man he was chasing. He plays the same kind of guy here. A little broken, a little past his prime, but still the smartest guy in the room. It’s a role that suits him well.

Barry Keoghan also seems to be on our screens a lot these days. I read recently he deleted all his social media, as people were relentlessly mocking his looks. Forgetting for a moment that social media is mostly a scourge on human society these days, I for one welcome an actor who doesn’t fit the profile of the handsome leading man.

In both The Killing of a Sacred Deer and The Banshees of Inisherin, your eyes just kind of follow him every time he’s on the screen. In the new Peaky Blinders movie, he plays an unhinged psychopath (well) and plays the same kind of role here. He’s an interesting contrast to Hemsworth (about as stock of a leading man you could possibly find.) Hemsworth is a criminal with a heart and a conscience. Keoghan is an out of control lunatic. The tension there adds an interesting layer to the film.

But the most interesting scenes in the movie are between Berry and Ruffalo. She plays the female version of Ruffalo here. An aging, intelligent beauty whose bosses seem to be looking for someone a little younger and fresher. She learns a hard lesson that loyalty is not always (or almost ever) a two-way street when you outlive your utility in a company.

All of these characters make some morally ambiguous decisions throughout the movie, but in the end, it’s one of those rare movies where everyone seems to get what they deserve.

Ruffalo catches his white whale that no one else was even close to catching, but then decides to throw him back after he catches him.

I always enjoy an ending that goes against the expected cliché a little bit. Even a powerhouse movie like Heat ends exactly like you know it’s going to at the beginning of the film.

This movies does things a little differently.

I for one found it refreshing. 

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