The new movie Crime 101, which just arrived on Prime Video after an underwhelming (and ultimately unprofitable) theatrical run earlier this year, has been discussed primarily in terms of Michael Mann, particularly his seminal crime drama Heat. That makes sense; writer-director Bart Layton obviously reveres Heat, and not just because he’s an over-30 dude who likes movies. This particular movie is a tribute to the bygone era of muscular yet unhurried thrillers unabashedly aimed at adults; it hardly needs a Mann level of technical sophistication to feel like a breath of fresh air. And Layton does find some contemporary notes in the well-worn trope of the seasoned criminal professional with a code of ethics and a penchant for rigorous planning; Chris Hemsworth (applying his experience from Mann’s decidedly weirder cyber-thriller Blackhat) plays that type as a rise-and-grid loner with more than a touch of social awkwardness.
But the real difference-maker, something that makes Crime 101 more than the sum of an exacting criminal and the obsessive cop (Mark Ruffalo) pursuing him and the loose-cannon wild-card criminal (Barry Keoghan) designed to show off the relative superiority of Hemsworth, is Halle Berry. Perhaps not coincidentally, Berry is playing the major character here who doesn’t map easily to a Heat counterpart. Monica Barbaro brings some needed humanity and charm to a stock part as Hemsworth’s love interest, but she’s very much playing the Amy Brenneman character from that movie, to Hemsworth’s dorkier (but also far less brusque) De Niro. Berry is doing something different.
It’s funny: At the time, Heat was praised for the depth of its female characters, presumably just for giving them some degree of interiority. And within the confines of an extremely male-driven movie, Brenneman (as a lonely woman who doesn’t know exactly what she’s gotten into with De Niro), Ashley Judd (as Val Kilmer’s fed-up love), and Diane Venora (as Pacino’s fed-up wife), all have their moments – especially Judd, who conveys a world of hurt, affection, and conflict in just a few scenes. But none of them, by design, really have their own storyline (again, Judd comes closest), not the way that Berry does in Crime 101.
Berry plays Sharon, an insurance broker growing frustrated as she’s encouraged to use her feminine wiles to impress clients while clearly being sidelined at work due to her being a grown-ass woman with the temerity to continue aging. Berry might not seem like ideal casting for this role given that she could comfortably pass for 20 years younger than her actual pushing-60 age, but it does make text the level of self-maintenance required in a field that depends on projecting a youthful, seductive image. The careful pacing of Crime 101 allows the movie to follow Sharon more closely than some movies would bother with; we watch her at work and at home, probably more than is strictly necessary for her role in the plot: Helping Mike (Hemsworth) with inside information about an off-book diamond sale that’s perfect for his style of invisible heisting.
Sharon would know something about invisibility; despite her stunning beauty and obvious smarts, she’s on the receiving end of a blindness that afflicts young corporate bros, miraculously cured when someone younger crosses their eyeline. Some have goofed on a scene where Berry looks into the mirror while applying a truly ridiculous layer of makeup to her already well-preserved face, but it gets the point across: Just as Mike must prepare for his intricately timed and plotted crimes, so must Sharon meticulously curate her appearance. (Just imagine, the movie implies, what it would be like for someone who’s not at the Halle Berry level of movie-star magnetism.) Berry has said she identified with this aspect of the character, and it shows in her face.
Without strong collaborators, Berry can be prone to overacting, but the extra pop she brings to Crime 101 keeps it from being a straight up pastiche; it’s not that the material about overlooked middle-aged women is shocking or groundbreaking, but that Layton works it into his slick crime thriller so naturally, giving Berry as much attention as Ruffalo, and more than Keoghan. Despite Sharon’s frustrations, it’s also a more active and hopeful role than most of the women in Heat, who are swept up in fates largely beyond their control. Sharon actually feels more reminiscent of the Dennis Haysbert character in Heat, an ex-con who we briefly see gritting his teeth through a line-cook gig at a diner with a nasty and corrupt boss, simply because he needs to stay employed as a condition of his parole. It’s all there to explain why he’s willing to sub in as the criminal gag’s getaway driver at the last minute; again, not strictly necessary from a narrative point of view, but it provides such rich texture to suddenly give the audience the rooting interest that comes from a strong actor given some empathetic background.
Berry’s subplot has a similar function, only it’s a crucial part of the movie’s tapestry, rather than a single detailed patch. It’s not going to win her a second Oscar, any more than Crime 101 will do more than make a bunch of dad-movie aficionados briefly wonder why they didn’t go out to see it in theaters. (Just kidding! The real dad-movie aficionados mostly haven’t been out to the theaters since Taken 2.) But it’s a great, unfussy example of how a 35-year veteran of the movie business still has the juice, if anyone bothers to make movies for her.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn podcasting at www.sportsalcohol.com. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Guardian, among others.
