Chris Hemsworth and Halle Berry star in a very modern thriller, which certainly explains why everyone’s miserable… You’ve stumbled across the Film Stories Newsletter! To get this sort of thing in your inbox every Friday, subscribe here. Hello! While Wuthering Heights took up all our column inches last week, Bart Layton’s superb thriller, Crime 101, slunk ... In Crime 101, even Chris Hemsworth is lonely
Chris Hemsworth and Halle Berry star in a very modern thriller, which certainly explains why everyone’s miserable…
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While Wuthering Heights took up all our column inches last week, Bart Layton’s superb thriller, Crime 101, slunk into cinemas like a gentleman jewel thief. Check out our thoughts on one of the most authentically modern thrillers of the 2020s…
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🎞️ Robert Duvall has passed away, aged 95.
🦈 Shark Tale star Martin Scorsese to cameo in The Mandalorian And Grogu.
🚢 Gerard Butler’s Plane sequel has capsized. Abandon Ship!
🐖 Mike Flanagan’s Carrie TV series heading to Prime in October. Don’t make her angry…
💀 Bill Hader is writing, directing and starring in an original horror film. He sounds busy.
In the world of Crime 101, even Chris Hemsworth can’t get a date.
It’s not for lack of trying. Over the course of the film, his gentleman jewel thief asks two separate women (Monica Barbaro and Halle Berry) on what appear to be dates. Both say yes, elegantly skirting around his social awkwardness and the stalker-ish context of his invites because, duh, he looks like Chris freakin’ Hemsworth.
But when date time comes around, poor Chris can’t look either of them in the eye. He answers Monica’s questions in short, closed sentences, reluctant to share anything from his (presumably sketchy) past. When he lies (a classic, “yes I’ve been here before, the veal’s good”) he’s caught out immediately, so doesn’t try again. Does he have family? Yes. A job? Yes. Handcuffs in bed? Yes.
Poor Halle Berry is lonely, too. We can tell because we see her sighing, swiping through a dating app full of saggy, greying men moments before Chris Hemsworth compliments her car (hello). It’s convenient cinematic shorthand for a 53-year-old insurance broker to reveal she wants something more out of life than a partnership at her firm, and immediately explains why she’d be so keen to make uncomfortable conversation with a handsome stranger.
Loneliness on the big screen usually works out very differently. Whether its hard-drinking detectives in pre-code noir or Saoirse Ronan’s tearful plea at the end of Little Women, feelings of isolation usually stem from our protagonists being out of step with their surroundings. Think of Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle – a character who’s provided a worryingly prescient template for a certain brand of male loneliness in the 21st century – or his modern equivalent in something like Pascal Plante’s 2023 thriller, Red Rooms. Loneliness stems from their status as social outcasts, not the other way around. Even Jo Marsh has the misfortune of being an ambitious and spirited young woman in a society with very different values.
Read more: Super-noir | How Sam Raimi defined a new genre
In Crime 101 meanwhile, loneliness has turned its whole cast into outcasts. Isolation is insipid, as much a part of the film’s narrative as Blanck Mass’ electronic drone. Berry’s insurance dealer meets with a client whose security system lets him and his daughter shoot intruders with a thumbprint; Mark Ruffalo’s scruffy police detective might be going through a divorce, but he accepts his new status sleeping on couches with the muted disappointment of a man who’s come to accept little better.
They all have phones, of course. By God, do all these guys have phones. From sleep tracking to WhatsApp hacking, dating activities to passing secret codes over Instagram, you’d be hard-pressed to find a film that makes greater use of the defining tech of the 21st century than this. Despite taking up, on average, at least three hours of our non-working days, the smartphone’s easy solution to most narrative problems has seen it struggle to get purchase on the big screen in any meaningful way. Not so, here.
Phone use and loneliness make for a cute pairing, and Bart Layton’s screenplay elegantly manages not to over-egg the link between the two. But with phone addiction and a loneliness epidemic both simmering under the surface of 2026 society, their presence in what seems more like a traditional thriller than a cultural essay marks Crime 101 out as a uniquely modern film – one which grapples with the specific problems of a 2020s audience even while paying tribute to Steve McQueen thrillers and star-driven car chases.
And despite a superficially upbeat ending, Layton resists tying his straight-and-narrow thriller up with simple answers. “You are safe… You are calm… You are exactly where you are supposed to be”, chants the meditation app bookending the piece, emphasising its characters’ places back in the status quo. Through little fault of their own, everyone in this film is sad; everyone is lonely; everyone is right where the world says they’re supposed to be. What could be a more 2026 message than that?
Crime 101 is in cinemas now.
