CRIME 101

James, who sometimes poses as Mark, is a professional thief who’s been pulling a series of robberies along the coast in Los Angeles and north and south of the city. Lou, a rumbled LAPD Robbery Homicide Detective, calls him the 101 Thief, because his thefts occur along the 101 Freeway, which runs north and south along the coast. Pacifica Coast Highway runs right on the coast, next to the beaches. The other cops aren’t happy with Lou’s theory, though, because it hasn’t resulted in any arrests. In fact, Lou disputes a couple arrests other cops have made, which makes them and the department look bad.

The movie opens with James robbing two couriers for a small jewelry store owner. The job goes haywire, though, when one of the two couriers has an extra personal gun and takes a shot at James, busting his car’s window. James has a devil of a time escaping, but he manages to escape to an underground garage where he’s stashed a second car. Before taking off in the second car, he puts a cover on the car with the smashed window.

James meets up with his fence, an older man named Money, to turn over the diamonds he stole. However, James complains to Money that he doesn’t like the next job, which is robbing a more fancy jewelry store in Santa Barbara, 75 to 90 miles north of Los Angeles. It’s too risky, he tells his friend.

Money is upset about James’ complaint. So, unknown to James, he hires Ormon, a young man with a motorcycle, to pull the Santa Barbara job. Ormon is more reckless, and more violent. When the job goes south because the store’s front door gets locked, Ormon, who’s wearing his motorcycle helmet, turns abusive and almost kills one or more of the store’s workers. He barely escapes when the police arrive.

The detective, Lou, is perplexed because James never hurts anyone in the robberies he commits, they’re so meticulously planned. However, his boss suspends him since several people got hurt by the mysterious thief in the motorcycle helmet.

James angrily confronts Money about hiring the other man for the job. The two yell at each other, causing a scene at the farmer’s market restaurant where they meet.

Money becomes incensed with James. So, he hires Ormon to follow James and find out where James is getting his information about who to rob next. It turns out James has a computer hacker who spies on the emails of potential victims, including rich companies and their employees.

The next potential victim is a beautiful, disgruntled female insurance broker, who’s unsuccessfully been angling for several years to become partner at an upscale insurance company. She’s actually the insurance for the jewelry store in the beginning, and Lou had asked her to run a polygraph on the owner because the robbery looked like an inside job to him. Lou doesn’t know that the computer hacker James uses is just really good at what he does.

James finds out Ormon is following him, and this leads to some twists, character decisions and a suspenseful confrontation at the end.

CRIME 101 is a well-made crime thriller with some film noir touches. Though there are some noble people in the story, there’s also some corruption, such as Sharon’s sleazy company, whose male bosses keep putting off her promotion to partner. Also, one of Lou’s detective colleagues is not above fudging evidence at a crime scene, and his boss just wants Lou to stop rocking the boat and be a team player. Many film noir thrillers take place in a corrupt world with ambiguous moral values that the characters, whether they’re heroic or not heroic, must navigate carefully, or meet their doom.

Tellingly, CRIME 101 makes a few overt references to Steve McQueen, especially his classic, iconic 1968 detective thriller, BULLITT, one of the best movies of its kind ever made. The movie even showcases a green Ford Mustang car in it, like the one McQueen drove. CRIME 101 doesn’t quite measure up to that great movie, but it does a pretty good job trying. And, its three stars, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo and Halle Berry, as The Thief, the Cop and the Lady Insurance Executive are pretty wonderful.

CRIME 101 is the first decent crime thriller in what seems like years. However, it’s spoiled by an excessive amount of strong foul language and some lawless antinomian story outcomes occurring at the end. Also, there’s some politically correct content regarding being homeless, orphaned, poor, or powerless in a corrupt, heartless world. For example, James was an orphan who lived in a foster home. Also, Sharon’s male bosses only use women to entice rich clients. Though still gorgeous (she’s played by Halley Berry, after all), she’s an older woman who they think has outlived her usefulness.

However, it’s the foul language and the mixed antinomian immorality at the end of CRIME 101 that make the movie excessive and unacceptable.