{"id":12138,"date":"2026-06-18T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/?p=12138"},"modified":"2026-06-11T14:09:50","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T14:09:50","slug":"a-crime-thriller-runs-long","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/a-crime-thriller-runs-long\/","title":{"rendered":"A Crime Thriller Runs Long"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>6 Minute, 30 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>

MOVIE REVIEW
\nCrime 101<\/strong>
\n –  <\/strong> <\/strong> <\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n

Genre: <\/strong>Crime, Thriller, Action
\nYear Released: <\/strong>2026
\nRuntime:<\/strong> 2h 20m
\nDirector(s): <\/strong>Bart Layton
\nWriter(s): <\/strong>Bart Layton, Don Winslow
\nCast:<\/strong> Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Halle Berry, Barry Keoghan, Monica Barbaro, Nick Nolte, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Corey Hawkins
\nWhere to Watch:<\/strong> available June 30, 2026, pre-order your copy here: www.moviesunlimited.com<\/a> or www.amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

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RAVING REVIEW: <\/strong><\/strong><\/strong>CRIME 101 has the confidence of the biggest crime-thriller stories ever told. The cars shine, Los Angeles looks expensive and lonely, the criminals speak in the expected tones, and nearly everyone seems trapped between pride and exhaustion. Bart Layton’s adaptation of Don Winslow’s novella wants to be a heist movie with a cool surface and a bruised interior, and for a decent stretch, that carries it. The problem is that CRIME 101 keeps mistaking size for depth. It has the bones with the cast, setting, style, and genre, but at 140 minutes, it often feels like a 110-minute thriller wearing more of a disguise than it needed.<\/p>\n

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Chris Hemsworth plays Mike Davis, a jewel thief whose robberies along the 101 freeway have built the kind of legend that crime movies love. He’s not an over-the-top criminal. He’s disciplined, controlled, and committed to a code that separates him from the more chaotic crooks encompassing the same world. Hemsworth is more interesting here than he often gets credit for, especially because the role asks him to hold back. He doesn’t have to dominate every scene. Instead, he plays Mike as someone who has built his identity around control because the second he loses it, everything collapses. That restraint suits him, and the film is strongest when it lets his presence stand in contrast to the emotion of a man trying to disappear after one last score.<\/p>\n

Halle Berry gives the film a human pulse as Sharon Colvin, an insurance broker who has spent years being underestimated, used, and boxed in. Sharon could have been an access point for the heist, the person with information who exists to move the plot along, but Berry pushes the character into something more. Her frustration feels specific. She’s not just tempted by money. She’s tempted by the chance to stop accepting a system that keeps asking her to be grateful for disrespect. That makes her involvement with Mike more compelling than the usual “ordinary person pulled into crime” setup. Berry gives Sharon a quiet rage that makes sense, and the movie goes up a notch whenever it understands that her dissatisfaction is as important as the diamonds.<\/p>\n

Mark Ruffalo’s Detective Lou Lubesnick works from the opposite side of the law but carries a similar sense of weariness. Ruffalo plays him as a man who has been doing the job long enough to know the difference between a theory and an obsession, even when he’s not always willing to admit which one he’s chasing after. He’s persistent and morally tired in a way Ruffalo can play without overselling it. The cat-and-mouse dynamic between Lou and Mike is supposed to be one of the film’s main focuses, and while it has moments of real charge, the movie doesn’t always follow that pursuit as much as it should.<\/p>\n

Barry Keoghan’s Ormon is used as a blunt instrument, a volatile rival whose presence is meant to throw Mike’s world into danger. Keoghan knows how to make instability feel sour and unpredictable, and CRIME 101 uses that to great effect in isolated moments. Although Ormon sometimes feels like a threat inserted to raise the temperature, because the rest of the film is too composed to boil on its own. The contrast between Mike’s professionalism and Ormon’s violence is clear, maybe too clear, and the film occasionally leans on that opposition in ways that feel familiar rather than revealing.<\/p>\n

Layton clearly understands the appeal of the Los Angeles crime thriller, where wealth, traffic, class resentment, and personal codes all press against each other. The movie has a strong sense of place, and the use of the 101 freeway gives the story a clean visual and symbolic line through the city. There’s pleasure in watching a film commit to the mechanics of a heist, the small details of preparation, the moral bargaining, and the way every participant tells themselves they can control the outcome if they just plan carefully enough.<\/p>\n

The issue is that CRIME 101 doesn’t trust its core enough. It keeps expanding outward, adding characters, motives, relationships, and morals until the story starts to feel crowded. Monica Barbaro’s Maya adds another aspect to Mike’s attempt at a life outside crime, but that doesn’t get enough room to become as essential to the larger story.<\/p>\n

This isn’t a bad film. It’s too well cast, too refined, and too watchable to dismiss. It also isn’t as gripping as it should be. For a crime thriller built around professionals closing in on one another, it spends too much time unfocused on the world around them. The runtime becomes noticeable not because the movie is slow, but because it doesn’t always make its detours count. A trimmed-down version could have hit harder, especially if it placed more emphasis on Sharon’s arc, Mike’s need for escape, and Lou’s investigation instead of spreading its attention across so many moving parts.<\/p>\n

CRIME 101 works best as a stylish crime drama, with enough strong performances to cover some of its drag. Hemsworth proves he can be effective when he dials down the movie-star. Berry gives the film a sharp contrast. Ruffalo brings fatigue to a familiar detective role, and Keoghan adds menace even when the writing doesn’t always give him new angles. Together, they make the film more compelling than its plotting alone might have allowed.<\/p>\n

CRIME 101 feels like a good heist movie that keeps reaching for greatness without finding the direct route there. It has atmosphere, confidence, and enough old-school crime-thriller appeal to satisfy viewers who miss this kind of mid-to large-budget adult-genre filmmaking. It also has the problem of being more impressive in pieces than as a complete piece. The diamonds sparkle, the cast shows up ready, and the freeway gives the film a strong road to follow, but the ride takes too many exits before reaching its destination.<\/p>\n

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MOVIE REVIEW Crime 101 –      Genre: Crime, Thriller, Action Year Released: 2026 Runtime: 2h 20m Director(s): Bart Layton Writer(s): Bart Layton, Don Winslow Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Halle Berry, Barry Keoghan, Monica Barbaro, Nick Nolte, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Corey Hawkins Where to Watch: available June 30, 2026, pre-order your copy here: www.moviesunlimited.com or www.amazon.com […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12139,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}