For years, superhero franchises have had their pick of high-profile stars. Crime 101 shows what happens when you give them a chance to act. Now available to stream on Prime Video in the UK, Crime 101 is a slick throwback to 90s thrillers in more ways than one. Starring Chris Hemsworth as a solitary Los ... Crime 101, and when actors stop playing superheroes
For years, superhero franchises have had their pick of high-profile stars. Crime 101 shows what happens when you give them a chance to act.
Now available to stream on Prime Video in the UK, Crime 101 is a slick throwback to 90s thrillers in more ways than one. Starring Chris Hemsworth as a solitary Los Angeles jewel thief, it owes a clear debt to Michael Mann’s Heat.
It explores the loneliness of its city-dwelling characters, including an insurance broker played by Halle Berry, and a middle-aged detective on the brink of divorce, played by Mark Ruffalo. There’s also Barry Keoghan as the plot’s wild card – a crazed hoodlum who constantly pops up to foil Hemsworth’s best-laid plans. (His closest analogue in Heat is the similarly deranged Waingro, played by Kevin Gage.)
But in all its stylistic and storytelling similarities to Mann’s genre staple, Crime 101 also highlights just how much Holllywood has changed over the past 30 years..
At the time of Heat’s release in December 1995, only one member of its central cast had played a superhero. That summer, Val Kilmer had played the Caped Crusader in Batman Forever – his only outing as the brooding, billionaire vigilante. By contrast, just about all of Crime 101’s main stars have also appeared in a superhero flick. Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo were both key players in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Thor and Bruce Banner, respectively.
Meanwhile, Halle Berry and Barry Keoghan have rather greedily played characters in both Marvel and DC universes. Berry played Storm in multiple X-Men movies, and then hopped over the fence to play the title role in the ill-fated 2004 outing, Catwoman. Barry Keoghan appeared as Druig in the MCU’s Eternals and made a brief appearance as the Joker in director Matt Reeves’ maudlin epic, The Batman. (It could be argued that he plays a distinctly Joker-esque role in Crime 101.)
Read more: In Crime 101, even Chris Hemsworth is lonely
Unintentionally, Crime 101 highlights one of the quirks of the superhero industrial complex that took over Hollywood from the early 2000s onwards. By now, there are remarkably few movie stars that haven’t played a major role in a Marvel or DC franchise.
In fact, it’s perhaps easier to list the high-profile actors who haven’t starred in a superhero movie over the past quarter of a century. Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep are among the old guard of Hollywood stars who’ve avoided the siren call of Marvel and DC so far. Likewise some younger actors, ranging from Leonardo DiCaprio at the wrinklier end (he’s a Gen-Xer) to Millennials like Timothee Chalamet and Saoirse Ronan.
Even some of the names on that list above (which is only a partial sample) have at least been approached to play superhero roles in the past. Leonardo DiCaprio flirted with the idea of playing Robin and Spider-Man at various points, if reports were accurate; Tom Cruise was the first choice to play Iron Man before the Stark part went to Robert Downey Jr instead.
Then there are the actors who were connected to superhero roles for a time but went on to play different ones. Jake Gyllenhaal was in the running to play Spider-Man in the 2000s; instead, he played Mysterio years later in Spider-Man: No Way Home. Joaquin Phoenix was approached to play Doctor Strange, a hand-waving role that instead went to Benedict Cumberbatch; Phoenix instead played an incel-informed version of the Clown Prince of Crime in Joker. If you’re a movie star, superhero franchises are like death and taxes: you can’t avoid them forever.
Crime 101’s casting also showcases a vital quirk of the human brain: suspension of disbelief. Although part of us knows that what we’re watching is really rich people showing off in front of a camera, a well-made film immerses us to such a degree that we can forget about that reality in the moment.
Had Crime 101 been made by a less capable director than Bart Layton, its stars’ comic book movie histories could have been a distraction. Look! Bruce Banner’s talking to Thor about Steve McQueen movies! Catwoman’s prowling around a millionaire’s house, looking at his expensive stuff. She’ll probably steal that later. Yikes, Thor’s just punched the Joker. And so on.
Instead, Crime 101 emerges as a tense, stylish thriller with some terrific performances – particularly from Ruffalo as the crumpled Detective Lou Lubesnick. The scruffy detective is a staple of thrillers and cop shows, but Ruffalo infuses so much truth and human warmth into his character that he feels instantly, believably real. He potters about, trying to take yoga classes and making excuses for his tired old saloon car. He really just deserves a big, friendly hug.
There have been arguments in the past that Ruffalo should replace Peter Falk in a rebooted Columbo; Crime 101 makes an even more powerful cast that Ruffalo should simply play Lubesnick in his own show or film series, solving various robberies and other non-murder crimes around Los Angeles. (One of the refreshing things about Crime 101 is how un-reliant it is on gunplay and body counts, at least for the most part.)
Decades ago, playing high-profile hero roles often came at a professional cost. Christopher Reeve, perhaps most famously, struggled for years to shrug off his boy scout image after his time as Superman; playing the Man of Steel didn’t exactly help Brandon Routh’s career, either.
Today, the number of actors who’ve played superheroes or villains is so vast that typecasting appears to have become a thing of the past. Stars have played superheroes, then gone on to win Oscars in worthy dramas (Christian Bale played Batman, then landed Best Supporting Actor forThe Fighter). Stars have won Oscars and then happily plunged into comic book territory (see Brie Larsson, who lifted Best Actress for Room, then took on Captain Marvel). Heck, stars have won Oscars for playing comic book characters – Joaquin Pheonix got Best Actor for Joker.
Recent years have seen the growing theory that superhero movies have passed their peak. Marvel’s output hasn’t been as reliably money-spinning as it was before Avengers: Endgame; even James Gunn’s Superman, which did well enough as a reboot for the franchise in 2025, fell far short of the estimated $1bn it was expected to claw in worldwide.
Then again, Marvel’s tipping vast sums into making Avengers: Doomsday, out this year, with a chunk of the budget seemingly spent on dragging in every Hollywood actor and star who’s ever played a superhero to make a cameo appearance.
Seriously: last year’s teaser trailer contained no fewer than 27 chairs with major actors’ names emblazoned on the backs. Little wonder that Avengers: Doomsday will have a reported runtime of three hours and 45 minutes – that duration will allow each actor (including Chris Hemsworth) to appear on screen for roughly 13 minutes each.
For now, at least, superhero franchises are still the tornado that hoovers up much of the world’s major acting talent. But at least we get relatively expensive, original movies like Crime 101 now and again: thrillers that don’t make a fortune at the box office, but give actors like Hemsworth, Ruffalo and Berry a chance to stretch their talents away from the spandex and CGI.
Crime 101 is streaming now on Prime Video.
