STEALING DIAMONDS AND MOVIE IDEAS

Crime 101 boasts a solid genre pedigree: The film is based on a novella by bestselling author Don Winslow, and its director is Bart Layton, of the acclaimed conman documentary The Imposter (2012).

- BEN KENIGSBERG NYT

But the auteur by proxy is clearly Michael Mann, to whom this crime saga owes a debt so immense that it’s hard not to come away feeling that the movie itself is stolen goods. Instead of Mann's Heat, it is something like “Reheated”.

But like lovingly warmed leftovers, it has its satisfactions: a charismatic cast, evocative Los Angeles location work, the sort of granular details on diamond couriering and insurance valuation that might give impressionable viewers ideas.

The 101 of the title refers not only to a how-to of robbery but also to the California freeway, the favoured getaway route of the story’s principal thief.

That thief calls himself Mike (Chris Hemsworth), and he is a meticulous loner who lives in what might as well be the same ocean-view pad that Robert De Niro used in Heat. (Like De Niro's character, he fills the space with as few identifying items as possible.)