Mark Ruffalo – The Magnificent 60s

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.

Timely reminder that Hollywood could make decent coin from lightweight romantic froth. Imagine how many movies this year would be delighted to be walking away with $84.1 million (around $111 million in today’s money) from the worldwide ticket wickets, especially given the low budget. So you have to wonder: what was the magic formula that audiences responded to that they’re not responding to now. Because, to be honest, this is the most unlikely of unlikely concoctions.

After a previous fairy tale Once (2007) – whose real-life happy ending included being adapted for theater and turned into a Broadway hit – writer-director John Carney (following two low budget flops) tries again but drives a tank through credibility. At this point rumpled Mark Ruffalo, whose undeniable charm has saved many a picture, had apparently lost the last of his nine marquee lives so that he now fell into the category of American actor fawned over by British filmmakers because he deigns – even though relegated to second billing – to get involved. For the top-billed Keira Knightley (Atonement, 2007) it would prove to be her last hit.

Musician Adam (Dave Kohl), on the cusp of stardom, has been flown over to New York by his record company. His girlfriend Gretta (Keira Knightley), along for the ride, is an unsuccessful songwriter. After Adam has an affair, she dumps him, wandering the streets with a bag and a bike until, lo and behold, she bumps into (as one does in a city of 19 million people) old pal Steve (James Corden) busking on a street corner.

At an open mic gig, she is pestered to do a number. The minute she starts singing the entire audience starts chatting amongst themselves. But wait, just-fired depressed alcoholic record producer Dan (Mark Ruffalo) in the audience recognizes her “talent,” immediately envisaging the string and percussion arrangement that could magically transform the number. Except, she doesn’t want fame, she wants purity. Initially, rejecting his (artistic) overtures, she agrees to his world-beating notion of recording an album in the streets, Steve having miraculously accumulated sufficient recording equipment. Cue umpteen shots of cute New York (Brooklyn Bridge, Greenwich Village) and no hummable songs.

There’s kind of a will-she-won’t-she romantic subplot with Dan but he’s still smitten with estranged and acidic wife Miriam (Catherine Keener). Another subplot involves his daughter Violet (Hailee Steinfeld). Sparks never fly and you start wishing for the next best thing – a speedy resolution. No such luck. Dan makes said album, complete with (would you believe) 24-page glossy booklet. Gretta rejects a record deal out of supposed purity, but in fact greed, wanting more than a 10% cut of the pie.

The disc sells 10,000 copies in a day on the internet. Rewind. It sells that amount because (purity be damned) one of Dan’s buddies is Mos Def and he is a God of Twitter and enough of his millions of followers obey his every command. There is but one subtle scene, when Knightley intuits her boyfriend’s betrayal and without a word slaps him in the face.

A few more slaps would have done this film good. Knightley gushes like one of the Famous Five, the film itself like a 1940s movie where rejected theatrical nobodies put on a show in a barn. The central theme of artistic purity and refusing to give in to an over-commercialized business scarcely rings true, but somehow it provides the movie with the kind of innocence that the more romantically-inclined among the audience would vote for in a world of wishful thinking.

And, actually, precisely because it refuses to give the audience what in one way it’s demanding – a proper romantic movie – and goes down the other route of artist fighting for integrity, it comes off with something of the rare feel of a movie being true to itself.

Of course, since then, Ruffalo’s career has occasionally soared, both artistically (three more Oscar nominations, most recently for Poor Things) and commercially (long-running role as The Hulk). Conversely, Knightley’s career has plummeted. Outside of The Imitation Game (2014) in which she had a supporting role and a bit part in the final Pirates of the Caribbean adventure, each successive movie in which she has been top-billed has made less than the last. From a $14 million haul for Colette (2018) we’re now down to $1.9 million worldwide for Misbehaviour (2020) and $400,000 for Silent Night (2021). After her breakthrough in True Grit (2010), Hailee Steinfeld’s career had also been wayward, big budget flops including Bumblebee (2018) and The Marvels (2023).

If the movie’s box office sounds like a Hollywood fairy tale and you maybe recall it as not doing much business Stateside, that’s because, in one of those anomalies that occasionally shine on a movie, it proved an absolute sensation in South Korea. Just under half of its entire worldwide revenue came from South Korea. Go figure.

Even without that, a $43 million haul for an improbable lightweight semi-romance mainlining on artistic purity would have had the backers rubbing their hands with glee.

Tag: Mark Ruffalo

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

Begin Again (2013) ***