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With his documentary The Imposter and his narrative feature debut American Animals, writer/director Bart Layton displayed an impressive knack for spinning true crime tales into riveting viewing experiences. His new film, Crime 101, isn't inspired by any real life criminal shenanigans. It's adapted from a novella by Don Winslow, but Layton draws influence from a century of American crime cinema. There is much of Michael Mann here, with stoic male professionals staring out into the ocean from the balconies of their barely furnished beachfront homes, while Layton's ability to make flirtatious doublespeak as erotic as the most explicit sex scene suggests he's studied the classics of film noir. Characters flirt through laying out their material ambitions here in a manner that is far sexier than the unconvincing romping of Emerald Fennell's "Wuthering Heights" or the 50 Shades movies.
