Crime 101: Slick and suspenseful

Crime 101 (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for violence, sexual candor, brief nudity and plenty of profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

This is a solid, methodical crime thriller, very much in the mold of classics such as 1971’s The French Connection, 2010’s The Town, and director Michael Mann’s Heat (1995) and Collateral (2004).

 

During their first date, Maya (Monica Barbaro) becomes increasingly puzzled when
Mike (Chris Hemsworth) is unable — or unwilling — to share personal details about
his childhood, friends and family members.

Director/scripter Bart Layton delivers a similarly clinical, semi-detached atmosphere, along with an intriguing roster of characters, each deftly portrayed by the excellent ensemble cast. Layton also benefits from his source material: the 2021 novella by respected crime author Don Winslow.

The best line from that novella, which firmly establishes the milieu in which these individuals operate: “Laws are made to be broken, with rules that are made to be followed.”

 

The on-screen result is a treat.

 

Layton doesn’t waste time with any back-story. We briefly meet our three primary characters as each greets a new day: Mike Davis (Chris Hemsworth), cool, calm and collected; Sharon Coombs (Halle Berry), exhausted from another night of fitful sleep; and Lou Lubesnick (Mark Ruffalo), rumpled, flustered and unhappy.

 

Matters then focus on Mike, as he begins another of his precision-planned heists of jewels being transported to underworld buyers. He intercepts and takes the place of a guard, which grants him access to the actual transfer point, orchestrated by the shady jeweler (Payman Maadi, as Sammy Kassem). Davis brandishes a gun, sufficient to frighten everyone into cooperation; clearly, variations of this approach have succeeded many times before.

 

But this time things go slightly awry, because an intermediary brought along a younger, unseasoned companion who behaves rashly.

 

Clearly shaken, Mike nonetheless keeps his rendezvous with his fence and “sponsor,” known only as Money (Nick Nolte). They discuss Mike’s next scoped-out job, involving the robbery of a posh Santa Barbara jewelry store. But Mike has had second thoughts, concerned by too many variables.

 

Meanwhile, high-end claims adjuster Sharon Coombs (Halle Berry), dressed to kill, is doing her best to sweet-talk über-rich Beverly Hills asshole Monroe (Tate Donovan) into allowing her company to insure and protect all the flagrantly expensive elements of his upcoming marriage to his trophy fiancée, Adrienne (Andra Nechita). 

 

Sharon has long been promised partnership at her firm, but she’s beginning to realize that her smarmy boss, Mark (Paul Adelstein), has been dangling this hope while using her as glamorous “bait” on wealthy clients. And, on the north end of 50, Sharon worries that she may be reaching her sell-by date … particularly when Mark augments his team with a much younger cutie.

 

When Kassem calls the police; Lou catches the case with his partner, Tillman (Corey Hawkins). Recognizing the modus operandi, Lou is convinced that this is the latest job by the same individual responsible for a couple dozen earlier, similar heists, all of them committed at stores along the 101 freeway. But he’s alone is this belief, and his ongoing obsession has diminished the respect he once possessed, as a capable investigator.

 

Lou is an old-style cop, who trusts his instincts and believes in following even the tiniest of leads. This attitude has made him a dinosaur, increasingly at odds with a boss who prefers clearing cases off the department ledgers, to actually solving who perpetrated them.

Ghosted: Rather insubstantial

Ghosted (2023) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for strong action violence, mild sexuality and brief profanity

Available via: Apple TV+

By Derrick Bang

This certainly is the epitome of “guilty pleasure.”

 

Were it not for the charismatic screen presence of stars Chris Evans and Ana de Armas, director Dexter Fletcher’s action/adventure rom-com would be nothing but a case study in formulaic excess.

 

Pinned down by gunfire in the mountainous region of Pakistan's Khyber Pass, Cole
(Chris Evans) and Sadie (Ana de Armas) are about to endure a fate worse than death.
But fear not: A dilapidated and hilariously colorful bus is about to provide escape (of sorts).

Goodness knows, the dialogue — blame Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers — is beyond eye-rollingly lame. And while the premise has promise, the required suspension of disbelief too frequently hits 11, on a 10-point scale.

 

That said…

 

Evans and de Armas are entertaining together, and the dog-nuts plot builds to an inventive — if highly improbable — climax that deserves points for originality. (It does, however, remind me of the final merry-go-round sequence in Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, although I’d be very surprised to learn that Reese et al channeled that.)

 

Events begin in Washington, D.C., where Cole Turner (Evans) manages a booth at a lively farmers’ market, selling produce grown at his family ranch just outside the city. He and traveling art curator Sadie Rhodes (de Armas) meet cute over her intended purchase of a house plant from a neighboring stall.

 

This is the film’s worst exchange of so-called flirty banter, and — coming so soon — it bodes ill for whatever follows. But hang in there; things do improve. A bit.

 

Lamentable first impressions lead to a whirlwind day together, after which Sadie departs on her next assignment. Cole, assuming that “magic” has entered his life, texts her during the next several days: at first romantically, then curiously, and finally much too aggressively. All to no avail; Sadie ignores — “ghosts” — him completely.

 

Cole’s subsequent agitation proves quite amusing to his father (Tate Donovan), mother (Amy Sedaris) and particularly younger sister Mattie (Lizze Broadway), who warns him against such “stalkerish” behavior. But Cole doesn’t see it that way, and circumstances give him the means to find Sadie. 

 

He forever misplaces things, and long ago put little trackers on crucial personal items, all of which can be located via his Smart phone. Sadie accidentally departed with his allergy inhaler, which places her — Cole is surprised to learn — in London. 

 

“Go after her!” Mom and Dad insist. “Are you kidding?” Mattie, the voice of reason, objects.

 

Cole nonetheless decides that this would be the Ultimate Grand Romantic Gesture. And so he flies to London.

 

But when he traces his tracker to somewhere on or beneath the Tower Bridge, he’s unexpectedly attacked by three goons, chloroformed, and wakens in the sinister lair of a giggling torturer — Tim Blake Nelson, deliberately overplaying the role — who believes that Cole is a legendary CIA operative code-named “The Taxman,” and has information about a mysterious whatzit known as “Aztec.” Because, well, Cole was in the wrong place at the right time.

 

Worth: Not as much as it should be

Worth (2020) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for brief profanity and dramatic intensity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

What price a life?

 

Insensitive and vulgar as that question seems — how can anybody put a monetary value on the loss of a loved one? — actuaries, lawyers and insurance companies routinely do so.

 

A chance meeting at an opera performance allows Ken Feinberg (Michael Keaton, left)
and Charles Wolf (Stanley Tucci) to start bridging the divide that has found them
judging the 9/11 compensation fund from strikingly different points of view.

Director Sara Colangelo’s provocative drama, which opens in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, follows the struggle to assess justice and fairness in one of American history’s most monumental attempts to assess “worth.” Max Borenstein’s screenplay is drawn from the 2006 memoir by Kenneth Feinberg, who was appointed “Special Master” of the U.S. government’s September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.

As Borenstein’s script quickly depicts, however, this Congressional act of apparent compassion was — to a great degree — surface gloss. The fund was attached to the Air Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act, a $15 billion bailout bill passed just 10 days after the terrorist strikes. The “fund gesture” hoped to “encourage” the survivors of 9/11 victims not to sue the industry into oblivion, thereby — in the words of airline corporate doomsayers attending a key meeting with U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft (Victor Slezak) — preventing a “possible economic cataclysm.”

 

Feinberg (Michael Keaton) is introduced a few days earlier, as he demonstrates the legal nature of “worth” to a class of university students. He’s a number-cruncher and creature of pure pragmatism, believing to the core that any issue can be solved with carefully calculated equations, and that all individuals involved will behave rationally and respect the resulting “tort-style compensation” of such efforts.

 

Keaton is ideal for this role, his feral intensity and smirky condescension operating at full throttle. This master-of-the-universe aura notwithstanding, he certainly isn’t evil; he genuinely believes that he’s doing good, and that the best possible outcome can be achieved if everybody simply acknowledges that he knows best.

 

Such blunt expediency takes its toll; Feinberg relaxes, at the end of each day, by bathing himself in classic opera. We get a vague sense that his rough edges are softened by his wife, Dede (Talia Balsam); we also suspect that she doesn’t entirely agree with his attitude. But Borenstein’s script leaves their relationship badly under-developed.

 

Feinberg and his firm — his chief lieutenant is Camille Biros (Amy Ryan) — gained their lauded reputation as master mediators after chaperoning previous high-profile cases involving asbestos personal injury litigation, and Agent Orange product liability litigation. But those cases developed over the course of years, even decades, by which time emotions had cooled; on top of which, there never was a single “asbestos incident” that snuffed thousands of lives in a blinding flash: a distinction Feinberg fails to recognize.

 

As a result, when he gathers an initial few hundred victim survivors — mere months later — he treats the presentation just like the classroom lecture we witnessed earlier, expecting all participants to be uniformly impressed by his charts and graphs. He’s therefore genuinely baffled — Keaton’s expression radiates total confusion — when the attendees turn on him like a pack of snarling wolverines.

Elvis & Nixon: Double Trouble

Elvis & Nixon (2016) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for occasional profanity
By Derrick Bang

Kevin Spacey’s marvelous impersonation of Richard Nixon, by itself, is worth the price of admission.

That said, everything about director Liza Johnson’s cheeky little comedy is thoroughly delightful.

To their mutual surprise, Elvis Presley (Michael Shannon, left) and President Richard M.
Nixon (Kevin Spacey) discover that they have a lot in common ... including a fondness for
Dr. Pepper.

It’s also based on an actual incident that deserves prominent placement in the Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction file: an event that scripters Joel Sagal, Hanala Sagal and Cary Elwes have built into a droll ensemble piece that also would work as an amusing stage play, particularly if staffed as well as Johnson and casting directors Kerry Barden and Paul Schnee have done here.

Johnson’s film expands upon the unlikely White House encounter between Elvis Presley and President Nixon, which took place shortly after noon on Dec. 21, 1970. Presley orchestrated the meeting, mostly because he wanted to augment his collection of official police badges with one from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.

Nixon, in turn, was encouraged to approve this unexpected guest as a means of enhancing his “one of the people” cred, and for the killer photo op. The latter scheme backfired somewhat, when Presley requested that the meeting be kept secret ... which it was, but only for about a year, at which point columnist Jack Anderson published what he had learned.

Which, as it happens, wasn’t as much as one might think. Elvis’ visit took place before Nixon had the Oval Office wired for continuous taping, and our only record of their actual conversation is based on notes taken by Nixon aide Egil “Bud” Krogh.

Which conveniently gives this film’s scripters plenty of room for, ah, embellishment. And they’ve done this with deliciously understated subtlety, matched by Johnson’s equally delicate touch with her cast.

The story begins a few days earlier, as a bored Presley (Michael Shannon), dismayed by the images of civil unrest emanating from the multiple TV sets in his Graceland lounge, impulsively decides that he can do something about this. He flies to Los Angeles to collect longtime friend and handler Jerry Schilling (Alex Pettyfer), who has left Presley’s employ in an effort to carve out his own career.

This is the first of the film’s strong character dynamics. Presley clearly misses Schilling, in great part because Jerry is one of the few people who likes Elvis for what he is, rather than the superficial wealth and celebrity. Despite that, Presley clumsily tries to “buy” Schilling’s return with offers of expensive gifts: a wistfully ironic touch that Shannon delivers with an endearing, gruff awkwardness.