Movie Review

Chris Hemsworth tries to steal diamonds and hearts in Crime 101

Chris Hemsworth in Crime 101.

Photo courtesy of Amazon Content Services

The career of actor Chris Hemsworth is a curious one, as it feels like he’s a huge star (mostly from playing Thor in Marvel movies) and not at the same time, with most of the non-MCU movies featuring him in a lead role failing to become big successes. But he still has a certain presence about him, which is why he’s being given another chance to prove his star power in the new thriller, Crime 101.

Hemsworth plays Davis, a talented thief who knows how to get what he wants without resorting to violence. When a job early in the movie turns slightly sideways, it makes him think twice about working with his handler (Nick Nolte), who seems to prefer someone with a stronger touch, like the up-and-coming Ormon (Barry Keoghan).

Davis is the main character, but two others who come into his orbit get their own subplots. Lou (Mark Ruffalo) is a slightly schlubby LAPD detective who’s convinced he knows the pattern of an unknown thief that likes to hit places close to Highway 101. Sharon (Halle Berry) works for a high-end insurance agency known for working with ultra-wealthy clients, the types who might be a great target for a thief like Davis.

Written and directed by Bart Layton, the film has a decent propulsion to it that comes with most crime thrillers. Davis and Ormon represent the yin and the yang of criminal approaches, and and it’s interesting to see the juxtaposition between the two as their simmering rivalry heats up over the course of the film. When the film commits to actually showing its crimes, it has an excitement that’s worth watching.

Unfortunately, Layton displays a real lack of focus, taking the audience into subplots with each of the three main characters that prove unnecessarily distracting. Lou’s marriage problems may explain his disheveled appearance, but there’s no need to see him deal with them with wife Angie (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Sharon’s troubles with her male-dominated company prove slightly pivotal, but still don’t merit the time put into exploring them.

The most baffling subplot is Davis pursuing a relationship with Maya (Monica Barbaro), a woman he randomly meets. At different points in the movie, including many of his interactions with Maya, Davis seems like the most uncomfortable, antisocial person in the world. And yet he somehow morphs into a suave smooth-talker who’s able to convince anyone to do what he wants at other key points, making it unclear exactly what kind of person he really is.

Hemsworth does relatively well in the lead role, but he’s still missing that certain something to make his character, and therefore the movie, truly compelling. The rest of the cast is fine, too, but each of them seem to be putting in just the minimal amount of effort to make the film watchable. Ruffalo and Barbaro come off the best, but with the talent in the cast (11 Oscar nominations and one win), they could have been used better.

Crime 101 has most of the ingredients to be another great entry in the genre, and it succeeds when it actually decides to deliver on its promise. But too much of the film is spent on things that have no real bearing on plot or character development, leaving the movie in the middle of the pack.

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Crime 101 is now playing in the theaters.

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Movie review

Over-the-top The Bride! makes other Frankenstein movies seem subtle

Photo by Niko Tavernise

Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley in The Bride!.

The story of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster is now over 200 years old, with Mary Shelley’s book having been adapted or referenced in close to 500 films. Less common is the character of The Bride of Frankenstein, which existed in the original text but has more often than not been excised in adaptations. Writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal has tried to rectify that by giving the character a big showcase in her new film, The Bride!.

Gyllenhaal has reimagined the story as one in which a woman named Ida (Jessie Buckley) becomes possessed by the spirit of Shelley (also Buckley). At the same time, the already-existing Frankenstein’s monster (Christian Bale) approaches Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening), who specializes in reanimation, with the request to make him a wife. When Ida falls to her death in an “accident” involving her boyfriend (John Magaro), the ideal corpse becomes available.

After Ida’s resurrection, she and the monster become restless being studied by Dr. Euphronius and decide to break out to experience the world. The world, naturally, is not exactly welcoming to them, and soon the couple are on the run for causing mayhem, including a few murders. In hot pursuit are detective Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) and his assistant, Myrna Mallow (Penélope Cruz), as well as other authorities.

It’s clear that Gyllenhaal wanted to merge the Frankenstein story with Bonnie & Clyde, especially since she sets the film in the mid-1930s. And that wouldn’t have been a bad idea if having the monster and The Bride going on a crime spree was truly the focus of the movie. But most of the time there’s less intentionality in their misdeeds and more confusion, leading to a muddled plot with no clear direction or end goal in mind.

One of the biggest problems is that Gyllenhaal starts the energy of the film at an 11, giving her and everyone else nowhere to go but down. She dabbles in multiple different tones, at times going the straight drama route and other times making what seems like full-on camp. At one point, she even has the monster and the Bride in a dance sequence set to “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” which would be hilarious as an homage to Young Frankenstein if the film weren’t so disjointed.

Most baffling of all is what Gyllenhaal wants from The Bride character. She morphs multiple times over the course of the film, from close to unintelligible at the beginning to rough-and-tumble at the end. There are hints at the lack of control she has over her autonomy, including Shelley’s possession of her and the monster lying to her about her past, but any commentary that Gyllenhaal might be trying to make gets lost amid the oddity of the film as a whole.

Both Buckley and Bale are all-in for their performances, which definitely fall in the “love it or hate it” dichotomy. Each scene is pitched so high that there’s little nuance to either of them, and neither is on par with their previous Oscar-caliber roles. The high-powered supporting cast of Bening, Sarsgaard, Cruz, and Jake Gyllenhaal is watchable based on previous roles, but none of them elevate this particular movie.

Whatever intentions Maggie Gyllenhaal had in making The Bride! are only halfway legible in a film that can never find its tonal footing. There has rarely been subtlety in movies featuring Frankenstein’s monster and related characters, but this one makes all the others seem like stuffy dramas in comparison.

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The Bride! is now playing in theaters.