It always blows my mind how Michael Mann’s Heat, an exceptional and influential film wasn’t just not nominated in Best Picture, it wasn’t nominated anywhere in any category. In fact, it missed all major precursor awards,despite its critical acclaim and cultural significance. From some of the best written, most well shot sequences, to the dynamic performances by Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro, I’d like to think if we could do it all over again, Heat would make the cut.Crime 101 certainly didn’t fall from the tree, taking a charismatic theif, an aging cop with a fractured family, and a complicated web of romantic entanglements, and a cocky young protege and hoping that because Heat missed on the Oscars, or because it was 31 years ago, we’ve moved on. The problem is, greatness is still greatness, and a clone can’t topple an icon.

Crime 101 is a tedious, extended crime drama about a handsome thief, Mike (Chris Hemsworth), who carefully plans his crimes as to avoid violence and leaving evidence behind. his case soon falls at the feet of a tired police detective (Mark Ruffalo), who the film goes out of its way to show us is not in a good place in his home life, with Jennifer Jason Leigh being summoned to set to play the wife just to establish he has one, and she stresses their marriage is over. Alas, poor Yorick…

Ruffalo has already done the aging cop thing before, and done it better, top lining HBO’s Task, reminding us that all film stars get old eventually, even the Hulk. In the case of Crime 101, he is chastised for his approach to his latest case, since his theory would mean that some of the cases closed by his unit found people who were not actually guilty of the crime. He deduces that this particular criminal is targeting locations along the 101 in California. He’s not wrong.

Both men will become entangled with an insurance agent (Halle Berry), who at first is interested in doing her job, and is less so when she’s fired for being 53, and too old to attract new clients. So, she becomes more morally flexible which is good for Mike, but still remains single, which is good for our cop since Jennifer Jason Leigh is off to shoot her next project.

Mike gets his tips from some mysterious crime boss (Nick Nolte), that the film utilizes until it forgets he exists, and he just stops appearing in the film. There’s also a nameless biker criminal with an intense amount of energy (Barry Keoghan) who is trying to follow Mike and figure out this perfect score of his.Mike also falls for a young woman (Monica Barbaro) and starts up a fling. Because the cast isn’t big enough, Ruffalo’s partner (Corey Hawkins) is a recognizable face without offering much to the film, and the target for all this thievery is the same man who thinks 53 is too old (Tate Donovan).

Crime 101 feels like if you asked an algorithm to write a film inspired on things already made before. The film is technically based on a novella, but it somehow feels so cluttered, that it either needed to be a much more streamlined 90 minute film, or a limited series where Jennifer Jason Leigh would have eventually gained a second scene.

Everyone is an archetype of something we’ve seen before. Mike is the secretly good hearted criminal looking for his last score, surrounded by a cop who sacrificed his family for his job to now face an existential crisis of whether or not it was worth it, split by potential love interests, sidelined by an impatient young criminal the complete opposite of our lead, and backed by a shadowy crime lord, with a smarmy rich guy we’d love to see lose a bit of his money.If it ain’t broke, i suppose, don’t fix it.

While Crime 101 feels punishingly long and not worth the trouble, it does hav a cast of actors who all understood the assignment. not one performance here is bad, yet no one is delivering their best work. Mind you, each of these actors is either an Oscar Winner, nominee, or responsible for a major film. Berry is the lone winner, with Ruffalo, Keoghan, Nolte, Barbaro, and Leigh all adding to the prestige on their own accord. I’m sure this has a trailer that reminds you of the pedigree of the cast.

There still needs to be a film here though. I needed something other than familiar concepts and incomplete threads. The whole finale of the film is frustrating, as it seems to abandon common sense, and offers nothing to the film. For example, Ruffalo makes a gesture to Berry, but why? They aren’t a couple, and he barely knows her. Are we supposed to believe he’d risk it all in that moment for this? it doesn’t even trigger forward momentum in their relationship, instead ending on a flat understanding between two souls.

And Nolte, as I mentioned, is just gone from the film. Instead of rounding back to the one criminal the film isn’t arguing with their morality, they just weren’t interesting enough to return to. I also didn’t find the direction to be anything exceptional, and the score felt like a placeholder for something better.

The audio description trips and falls down a problematic set of stairs. it chooses to live and die by the rule of “if they haven’t said their name, we cannot use it in the audio description”, and in a rock meets hard place scenario, this meant they actually chose to describe Hemsworth as the “handsome man” for a good duration of the film. Is his name a secret? No. He reveals it in a text message maybe about a third of the way into the film. So, the narration choice here was to go with something that is totally subjective, and open to interpretation, instead of just calling him Mike. This is like how America Ferrera was allowed to go the entirety of Barbie being defined either by her job, or her position as a mother, in a film with heavy messaging about female empowerment and individuality. That film stuck to its guns, and forced a generic broad definition on the third largest character, and eventual Oscar nominee. She does have a name, it was Gloria.

So, in their infinite wisdom, they went with “handsome man” because unless Chris Hemsworth has some facial scar added, or rocks a mohawk, there is nothing physically identifying about him. I hope you think he’s handsome, because that is all you get.

There’s not enough here to get me to like it. The film is overextended, and the audio description is frustrating.

Crime 101 feels less like a masterclass in filmmaking, and more like the entry level class they skipped, but should have taken, before embarking on the predictable and slow feature.

Rotten: 5.0/10