Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo Reheat, Well, Heat
DIRECTOR: BART LAYTON/2026
Davis has rules for his success: Always have a plan, always take care of the people around you, and always have a getaway.
Davis (Chris Hemsworth) has been pulling off jewel heists up and down the 101 freeway for months, and the police are no closer to discovering his identity. Because he never harms his victims, Detective “Lou” Lubesnik (Mark Ruffalo) believes many of these recent burglaries could have been pulled off by the same person, though the rest of the LAPD isn’t so sure. But one slip-up is all it takes to leave a clue, which means Lou may be closing in as Davis is planning a job on a high end insurance company where Sharon (Halle Berry) is an executive. As cop and thief circle each other, another and more violent criminal (Barry Keoghan) appears, infringing on Davis’s work and putting everyone in their orbit at risk.
Crime 101 comes from writer/director Bart Layton, of whom the only thing I know is he has seen Heat many, many times. This movie technically may be based off of a 2020 Don Winslow novella, but it’s a 139-minute homage to Michael Mann’s 1995 film visually (just starting with the aerial nighttime shots of LA), structurally (in a detective/thief cat-and-mouse plot), and story beats (Keoghan calls about a room service mistake just like Robert De Niro). A cop in a failing marriage? A loner thief? Scenes in diners, beach houses, and beneath overpasses? Layton has no interest in his hiding his influences.
To be fair, the characterization and plot twists aren’t one-for-one, which keeps 101 from feeling like a rehash of that Pacino/De Niro action totem. Hemsworth turns in a performance unlike anything he’s done before. Insecure, quiet, insular—his awkwardness creates an anti-charisma almost as powerful as the heroic, funny, and outsized charm he’s known for. Ruffalo is delightfully cranky, channeling a Mary Tyler Moore-era Lou Grant as much Roger Murtaugh. Keoghan is the twitchy jolt of chaos this slick action movie needs to prevent self-seriousness, and Berry…at least has more to do here than she did in her John Wick and Kingsman supporting roles. (There’s another piece to be written about where she ranks among today’s ill-used performers.) All of them get at least one solid moment to cook, and they often get to be funny. (Ruffalo’s inability to roll up a yoga mat? What a nice character moment.) Not everything works as well, such as a romantic subplot involving Monica Barbaro, which pushes the total runtime to at least 10 minutes too long. (Would her character have stayed for more than a line of dialogue if Davis weren’t so handsome?) But with plotting full of as many twists and turns as the 101, it’s a thrilling ride.