Review: Crime 101

Crime once again rules the streets of LA, though in the case of Crime 101 it's the good kind of crime - committed by a professional who plans things down to the smallest detail, points a gun but never gets violent, only robs people who are fully insured. He's even got a good reason for his one-man crime wave. Well, he thinks it's a good reason.

When a gun misfires in his face during yet another high stakes, supposedly low risk heist, our professional thief - let's call him Mike Davis (Chris Hemsworth) - starts to re-think the risk versus reward balance in his current line of work. For his fence (Nick Nolte) this signals a lack of nerve; time to bring up the next generation of violent criminal (Barry Keoghan) to keep the money flowing.

The only cop who suspects Davis even exists (his MO is basically leaving no evidence behind, which makes proving his existence a little tricky) is Lou (Mark Ruffalo, really going for it), an extremely shabby detective who is making no friends on the force with his wild theories, and no friends at home with his habit of conducting business on the toilet.

What exactly Sharon (Halle Berry), a high-end sales executive at a very high-end insurance firm, has to do with any of this is a mystery, though she seems to be struggling a little at work and work does involve a lot of very expensive things so it's not hard to figure out where this particular subplot is heading.

What distinguishes director Bart Layton's film from all the other attempts to remake Heat is that a bit of thought has been put into proceedings (it's based on a novella by crime author Don Winslow). Some of the plot dots are left for the audience to connect; not every single thing we see on screen is explained. The heists aren't overly complex, but they're planned enough to feel plausible.

There's also a bit more going on with the characters than usual. Some of them are getting on and are a bit worn down by life; Davis swings between being smooth and professional on the job (basically being Chris Hemsworth) and awkward and unsettled in his down time. His reason for crime is personal in a way that inspires pity more than respect; he's not really someone you'd aspire to, even if he does drive a lot of fancy cars.

What connects the central characters aside from the plot is that they're all in roughly the same position in life. They've been working at their job long enough to expect respect, only to discover their hard work doesn't mean shit; not only are they replaceable the second they stop delivering but oh look, here's their replacement right now. This message is what the experts call "timely".

All this is good stuff; unfortunately, when your movie goes close to two and a half hours, you also have to deliver a few thrills to keep your audience awake. People might talk about the performances or the late night mood of Heat, but the reason why it's still being ripped off thirty years later is because of the amazing shoot-out sequence in the streets of LA. Crime 101 does have the occasional car chase or armed robbery, but you won't feel the need to move towards the edge of your seat.

What this aspires to - and largely achieves - is a kind of mature crime vibe, a noir-ish tale of people pushed into situations they didn't choose because of circumstances and a general sense that the rich folks up on the hill don't want to share. What it lacks is any real sense of desperation to kick things into high gear and give what's going on some serious stakes.

Nobody here is living on the edge; everyone could walk away and still live an okay life. America turns out to be a place where you might as well do crime because you're going to be shat on either way. 

- Anthony Morris 

 

Review: Wuthering Heights

As novels go, Wuthering Heights has enough going on for a whole series of adaptations. What modern audiences expect - deranged passions on the wild and windy moors - is only a part of the action. One of the better jokes in this latest movie adaptation comes when Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) returns as a wealthy man after years away, and then just sits around smirking and refusing to say where the money came from. Nobody watching really cares about any of that background stuff: get back to the brooding and smooching, post haste.

It all began years earlier at gloomy Wuthering Heights, when the drunk dad (Martin Clunes) of Young Cathy (Charlotte Mellington) brought home a waif (Owen Cooper) that she promptly named after her dead brother Heathcliff. Cathy's former bestie, Nelly (Vy Nguyen), a mix of companion and servant, is rapidly stuck in a "Friendship ended with Nelly, now Heathcliffe is my best friend" nightmare while the near-feral (at first) boy and the somewhat extroverted girl run riot.

Years pass, their bond grows, and while they both kind of sort of understand that getting married is not the done thing, they are also sneaking around watching the servants have vaguely BDSM sex using whatever's handy in the stables. Can masturbation out on the moors be far behind now that Cathy has grown into a young woman (Margot Robbie)?

Things eventually come to a head when the wealthy new neighbour, Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif) and his somewhat quirky ward Isabella (Alison Oliver) spot Cathy hanging around the other side of the fence - well, lying on the ground, as her spying has resulted in a minor injury that requires them to take her in for a number of weeks. Not long after she returns he proposes, and she explains to Nelly (Hong Chau) that look, while Heathcliff's a great guy, marrying him would be beneath her... and the eavesdropping Heathcliff storms off before hearing the part where she says she will always love him. Oops.

The years go by with no sign of Heathcliff, Cathy settles in to her new home while her drunken loser father boozes away what little money he has, and then suddenly Heathcliff is back with an earring and he's bought Wuthering Heights. Of course, there is no way he and Cathy can get back together, especially when he decides it'd be fun to marry Isabella and chain her up like a dog. With her consent, of course - Heathcliff might be arrogant and tormented, but he's also very big on consent. 

Things continue to happen, but at some point it's hard not to notice that the wind seems to have gone out of Wuthering Heights' sails. Director Emerald Fennell (Saltburn) never quite figures out where all this is going, leaving this as little more than a collection of scenes that often work but sometimes don't, and then it just fizzles out in an ending that wraps things up just at the point where (if you know the novel, or even the Kate Bush song) things should be getting interesting.

Nothing here is remotely realistic, and yet (aside from the costumes and sets) it never quite leans into embracing the excesses of the story. It's not quite a YA adaptation, but it's nowhere near as transgressive as it likes to think it is. The opening scene is young Cathy and Nelly sniggering at a hanged man's erection, and it doesn't get much more mature than that; a later scene where we get a lengthy plot synopsis of Romeo and Juliet suggests that was as much inspiration as anything else. 

Worse, the emotional extremes are largely watered down: Heathcliff glares and smirks and wears black a lot (unless it's raining, then it's time for clingy white shirts) but he's no threat emotionally or physically, while at worst you'd call this Cathy flighty - though the constant disapproval of Nelly tries to suggest she's a fool to herself and a menace to others. 

Both Elordi and Robbie give good performances, but both seem oddly restrained. Their roles should play to their strengths; Elordi was excellent in the recent Frankenstein, playing an even more brutish and tortured Gothic lead, and Robbie's work as Harley Quinn had an unpredictable quality that would have been handy here. They make for a convincing couple but not much more - they match each others' energy, but that energy never really spins out of control.

These are hardly fatal flaws, and there is a lot of good in this adaptation. But its strengths are scattered throughout, coming through in isolated moments (the juxtaposition of Heathcliff's scars from childhood beatings with Cathy's bare back being laced into a corset) and stray glances. It's pitched as a story about a love that could not be denied, an overwhelming passion that swept aside everything in its path; it ends up being just two people groping each other in the back of a car*.

- Anthony Morris 

 

*okay, a stagecoach parked on the moors. Considering the couple are sneaking around at the time, it seems fair to ask: did Cathy drive it out there? It wasn't Heathcliff, as he's the one who gets out and walks away.

 

Review: Send Help

Few things are more satisfying to watch on the big screen than the tables being turned. Trouble is, on its own it's not quite enough to build a feature-length film on - and once you start adding in backstory and nuance and so on, you start to dilute the raw pleasure of seeing someone get their own back. The trick is to somehow complicate things in a way that builds on what we've come to see rather than water it down. As tricks go it's not an easy one to pull off.

Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) is very good at her job. Unfortunately, she doesn't quite grasp - or care - that just being good at your job isn't enough to get you moving up the corporate ladder when you're mostly known for bad jokes, ugly shoes, and smelly tuna fish sandwiches. 

Still, her boss was willing to overlook all that and bump her up to Vice President... until he died and his smarmy son Bradley Preston (Dylan O'Brien) took over. Being exactly the kind of bro you'd expect, he plans to show Liddle out the door - once she's outlived her usefulness, of course. There's a big overseas meeting coming up, so all he needs her to do is polish up some contracts on the flight over and then she's done.

One somewhat gory plane crash later and the two of them are washed ashore on a deserted island as the only survivors. Bradley has a busted leg; Linda has a newfound love of life, because as a wannabe Survivor contestant and all-round survival nerd, she's finally in her natural habitat. Building shelter, finding food, looking a whole lot healthier - she takes it all in her stride. Bradley's desire to keep on treating her as an underling? Not so much.

One of the many pleasures of this highly entertaining film is that both leads have a little more going on than you might expect. Linda is the heroine but like all oppressed nerds, she can take things a little too far; Bradley is a jerk, but he's not entirely stupid and it's possible he might learn the error of his ways. There's enough (unstated) chemistry between the pair to suggest another avenue down which things could go; both actors go all out whether they're lording it over the other or trying to make a human connection.

Director Sam Raimi (working from a script by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift) is up to his old tricks (who else would throw a completely random rotting corpse into a jump scare?) and he cranks up the energy here to create a story that never feels like it's just two people hanging around on a beach. Mostly because there's also a crumbling path running along a cliff. Oh, and some poison berry bushes. And what's that noise coming from the forest?

But this is mostly a battle of wills between two mismatched characters who really shouldn't let their guard down around each other. It's never really a fair fight, but you don't get to the top of the corporate ladder without learning some tricks - unless you're a nepo baby who inherited your position, then you're pretty much screwed.

- Anthony Morris