Barry Keoghan – The Magnificent 60s

Crime 101 (2026) **** – Seen at the Cinema

Bloated films have become a modern curse with “visionary” filmmakers indulged because studio executives can’t rein them in. But in the best films length plays a significant role. It provides an opportunity for depth and complexity, and to tell a tale from more than one angle. Nobody balked at The Housemaid (2025), ostensibly a tad overlong for a thriller at 131 minutes, but the time was exceptionally well used and the movie cleaned up, $350 million worldwide and counting, the hit of the year so far in terms of budget vs gross.

Crime 101 isn’t going to get anywhere near those figures but deserves to because despite its length (140 minutes) it’s remarkably lean. It reminds me of the spare pictures Walter Hill (The Driver, 1978) used to make where narrative rather than emotion was the key. Here, there are three flawed characters who you are desperate to learn more about but writer-director Bart Layton (American Animals, 2018) keeps such audience desire at bay while seducing us with a complex tale. Action, too, is limited, so be warned.

Jewel thief Davis (Chris Hemsworth) is too clever to get tangled up in action, clearly aware that shoot-outs can get messy and lead to unnecessary entanglement. He tends to commit his robberies off-site, while diamonds are being couriered to customers. He has no commitments, buys sex, lives in apartments that would be almost avant-garde in their simplicity, no proof that anyone lived in them at all.

And he’s very human. For a criminal he’s mightily spooked when a job nearly goes awry and he receives a very slight gunshot wound, not the kind to need treatment. Maybe his guard is down because when he meets up with publicist Maya (Monica Barbaro) he strikes up an awkward relationship, refusing to reveal a single thing about his life, and not having the smarts to invent one.

You might term that complication number one because she’s too contemporary a woman to be hooked by a mysterious stranger and the more she wants to know about him, the more defensive he becomes. This isn’t a major plot point because you get the impression he’s been there before and walked away long before complication set in. But I’m just telling you because that’s the tone of the film, no big emotional blow-ups or confessions, just the heart kept very much under control. Stoicism, if you like, the guiding principal.

When Davis passes on committing another robbery so soon, his fence Money (Nick Nolte) hands the job to the unpredictable bike-riding Ormon (Barry Keoghan). So Davis has to look elsewhere for a score and alights upon disgruntled insurance broker Sharon (Halle Berry), a singleton for career purposes you guess, who relies on self-help tapes to get her going in the morning, passed over for promotion once too often. Despite initially knocking him back, her fury at her smug employers brings her to the table.

And this would shape up as a twist on The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) except that Davis already has someone on his tail, cuckolded cop Lou (Mark Ruffalo), in the process of splitting with his wife, but getting heat from his boss because he’s convinced a string of jewel heists are the work of one man, when the department has already collared people for some of them. Eventually, for not playing the game over a crooked cop, Lou is stood down, but that leaves him free to take on the thief in his own way.

In between keeping tabs on Ormon and realizing that he has a cop on his tail, and that his newfound girlfriend is about to dump him, Davis continues trying to fleece $11 million from billionaire Steven Monroe (Tate Donovan), half in the cash necessary to pay for the illegally imported jewels.

But by now, beaten senseless by Ormon, Sharon also discovers that, like Davis, her courage is not up to the task, and spills the beans to the cop who puts into place a clever plan that would probably work except Ormon is ready to break up the party.

Although rewarding in its own way, the ending jarred somewhat, the incorruptible cop giving in to temptation, and letting the other suspects get off scot free. But in an era of tough and bloody twists it was an unexpected way to finish.

The three principals are excellent – Chris Hemsworth (Thor: Love and Thunder, 2022) proving he has the stillness and acting chops that makes the big stars great, a rumpled Mark Ruffalo (Now You See Me, Now You Don’t, 2025) making the most of a terrific part and Halle Berry (The Union, 2024) putting in a shift as a flawed woman – but Barry Keoghan (Saltburn, 2023) overacts so just as well the director mitigated his presence by sticking him under a biker helmet for most of the picture.

A well-measured hugely enjoyable show from Layton. A thriller for thinking adults.

Saltburn (2023) **

With the arrival of Emerald Fennell’s latest epic Wuthering Heights (or to give it it’s full title “Wuthering Heights” – yes, don’t ask me!) imminent I thought I’d go back to Saltburn and see if my second impression was any better than my first.

Alas, I was right first time. Another “visionary” director disappearing up their own backside, despite having a superb cast at their disposal including Oscar-nominated Jacob Elordi (Frankenstein, 2025, and now Wuthering Heights), Oscar-nominated Barry Keoghan (The Banshees of Inisherin, 2022) and Oscar-nominated Rosamund Pike (Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, 2025).

There wasn’t enough in a second viewing to convince me to spend a whole lot of my time revising my original review, so what follows is an expanded version of my first attempt.

Brideshead Revisited Meets Carry On Downton Abbey. Wouldn’t surprise me if that’s the way it was actually pitched, it’s just so uneven, veering through several different styles without ever finding a target. The shock elements are, unfortunately, just risible. Via the trailer this appeared to be a moody, atmospheric picture about entitlement, the downside, if you like, of Downton Abbey.

Instead, it’s just plain barmy, which might well have worked if its take on the bizarre had been consistent, but, really it’s a contender for the coveted So-Bad-It’s-Good Award with Rosamund Pike odds-on to nab the award for the best Maggie Smith impression. .

Oliver (Barry Keoghan) is supposedly a scholarship student at Oxford, coming from a sinkhole estate in Liverpool, parents drug dealers etc etc. Out of his depth, by chance he latches on to sex god Felix (Jacob Elordi) and is invited to spend the summer at the latter’s stately home complete with sneering butlers and demonic family, all graduates of the Over-Acting Academy.

Turns out we’ve not been watching Downton Abbey at all, but The Usual Suspects, Oliver not an innocent little bookworm after all but an extremely malevolent character who manages – in the absence (luckily) of post-mortem or any forensic examination– to bump off the entire family in order to inherit (don’t ask!) Saltburn in order to, in a bizarre nod to Risky Business, dance naked through it.

The only reason it gets any points at all is Jacob Elordi, who exhibits tremendous screen charisma, and because the barmy extremely self-centred and out-of-it Rosamund Pike does elicit a few laughs and maybe, courtesy of Richard E. Grant, has a haircut to enter some kind of Hall of Fame.

The shock elements are hilarious as though someone of school age has decided they are really going to shock mummy and daddy. So we’ve got Oliver licking up Felix’s leftover sperm in the bath, the various deaths and the stark naked (are you shocked now?) Risky Business homage.

Jacob Elordi has since come good. He was a believable Elvis in Priscilla (2023), excellent in On Swift Horses (2024) and superb as Frankenstein and possibly still in with a shout of becoming our next James Bond. Barry Keoghan hasn’t come good, at least in the commercial sense, second-billed in Bird (2024) and Bring Them Down (2024) and third-billed in Hurry Up, Tomorrow (2025). For all I know he may be content to plough the arthouse furrow but given his presence – and third-billed again – in the forthcoming big-budget Crime 101 that doesn’t seem to be the case, though it is true it sometimes takes a while for new faces to find a way to fit in.

It’s a shame really because spoofing Downton Abbey or Brideshead Revisited for that matter can be done with considerable ease as the recent Fackham Hall has proved.

Triple Bill of Duds: “May December” (2023) * / “Saltburn” (2023) / “A Forgotten Man”

The selection process for my weekly Monday visit to the cinema has sorely let me down. I never refer to reviews in advance, not wishing to learn anything, however inadvertently, about the story. So, I went into this arthouse trio – all showing I hasten to add at my local multiplex – with high hopes.

May December

I find it impossible work out how anyone, least of all a brace of Oscar-winners like Natalie Portman (here listed as producer) and Julianne Moore, could seriously consider making a movie about someone convicted of child sex abuse. In this case, I guess, the excuse is that because it’s a woman it’s either a) understandable or b) excusable. But if the subject was a male sex abuser I doubt if he would be given the same latitude.

This is one of those films that would have been far better dealt with as a documentary where the facts can be treated more straightforwardly rather than deliberately clouded by fictional elements and sympathetic treatment. Supposedly, the audience is provided with perspective since the movie revolves around an actress Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) doing preparatory work 20 years after the event as a prelude to playing the character in a television movie.

The fact that Gracie (Julianne Moore), the married woman convicted of having sex with a 13-year-old boy, denies that she committed any crime, maintaining a) that it was true love and b) that she was the victim, that the boy was “in charge” and the seducer, seems a very deliberate attempt to muddy the waters. Especially, when it becomes clear that the boy, Joe (Charles Melton), now of course a man, has been forced to bury his true feelings about the subject.

With the usual showbiz entitlement, Elizabeth sees nothing wrong with disrupting what is, on the surface at least, a reasonably happy family, forcing the children of this relationship to come to terms with the fact that at least one of them was born from an illegal coupling.

Not to mention the damage this will do to the innocent children of the couple on whom the story was based, Mary Kay Letourneau (since dead) and Vili Fualaau. That Elizabeth turns out to be pretty creepy herself – explaining to a shocked teenage audience that she gets aroused during sex scenes and seducing Joe – seems to be an attempt at mitigation (oh, look, we all do crazy things once in a while!).

Saltburn

Turns out we’ve not been watching Downton Abbey at all, but The Usual Suspects, Oliver not an innocent little bookworm but an extremely malevolent character who manages – in the absence (luckily) of post-mortems – to bump off the entire family in order to inherit (don’t ask!) Saltburn in order to, in a bizarre nod to Risky Business, dance naked through it.

A Forgotten Man

This wants to say something important about the neutrality stance of Switzerland during the Second World War. But unless you live in Switzerland, you won’t have a clue what it’s trying to say. And if you thought The Crown was off-the-wall in summoning up the ghost of Princess Diana, wait till you start counting the number of ghostly apparitions here of young Swiss chap Maurice (Viktor Poltier), whom the protagonist Henrich (Michael Neuenschwander), while Swiss Ambassador to Berlin during the war, failed to prevent being executed.

I’ve no idea if this aspect is based on a true story. Either way, fictional or not, it’s a preposterous central conceit. Supposedly, Maurice had been arrested for trying to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Theoretically, we should all be applauding his actions. He should get a free pass for trying to rid the world of a monster. But, in reality, how would you expect an Ambassador to go about pleading clemency for one of his citizens who tried to murder the ruler of Germany?

There’s clearly some angst about the fact that Switzerland managed to emerge unscathed after a war which left the rest of Europe in turmoil. But it’s pretty hard to summon any sympathy for anybody, least of all the director because whatever point he’s trying to make is made so obliquely it fails to register. That it gets any points at all is due to its brevity and that, as the first movie in my self-selected triple bill, I came out of it in a far better mood than the other two.