3 min readNew DelhiFeb 13, 2026 09:20 PM IST
The crime that hits you hardest when watching this effective heist thriller is how underused Halle Berry remains.
In this film with a good count of un-showy actors – even Hemsworth has about him a wounded, guarded air – the 59-year-old who has described her current Hollywood phase as her “second act” slices right through all the muscle to the heart. That is, every time she is on screen, which is really not that much time.
Occupying filmmaker Michael Mann’s territory, Layton is similar but different, putting his characters in place with much care and patience. That the crime itself, which is pulling off thefts of diamonds, does not get as much attention doesn’t really matter – for the most part.
Hemsworth is Mike/Davis, a master thief working for a raspy old boss, played by Nolte, whose greed holds as strong as ever, even as Parkinson’s has left him unsteady. He is even called ‘Money’. Without stating it, Layton makes it clear that Money has a hold on Mike that goes deep.
Ruffalo plays Lou, an honest cop with a heart of gold, who is a misfit in the Los Angeles Police Department where teams now have bureaucratic targets to meet such as “closure reports” on cases. Lou rightly suspects that the string of unsolved robberies along the city’s Route 101 (hence the name of the film) point to the hand of one man – that being Mike – and is going about proving it the old-fashioned way.
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From his grey hair to his scraggly beard to his wrinkled suit and his creaking old car, Lou is quite the cliche. But who in his right mind grudges Ruffalo anything?
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Berry is Sharon, a top executive in an insurance firm, who has been netting millionaire clients for her company by writing them policies for everything from their houses to their weddings and diamonds. But she has now hit the sturdiest of those glass ceilings: she is “53”, her boss spells it out, adding that it is the only number clients see. Sharon is smart, sexy, hot, with barely suppressed anger at how carefully she has cultivated it all – and Berry brings out her frustration beautifully.
Keoghan plays the livewire Ormon, who as Mike’s rival brings a crazy, unhinged energy that threatens to upend the older thief’s carefully balanced sphere of operations.
Their paths cross and separate, merge and separate, with Layton filming some very striking scenes between each of his people.
Barbaro has a brief, and actually superfluous, role as a woman Mike falls fast and hard for. But the good part is that she is never allowed to overstay her welcome.
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A faster wrapping up of the ending, a simpler plot around the moving of diamonds, lesser pretentiousness about the class divide, and a world that is more grey than the film’s preferred black and white – and Crime 101 would be home and dry.
Crime 101 movie cast: Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Halle Berry, Barry Keoghan, Nick Nolte, Monica Barbaro
Crime 101 movie director: Bart Layton
Crime 101 movie rating: 3 stars
