With a title like Crime 101, I go into such a movie with some trepidation.  Forgive me for being a square Catholic, but I prefer my protagonists to be on the legal side of the law.  I can acknowledge if said character is in a well-made film with good acting and exciting action.  Yet, if the person I am supposed to be rooting for has a flaw that he or she cannot overcome, hence the crime, then everything else feels lesser by association.  Now, as you shall see, our hero (for lack of a better term) is a complicated one, which softens my critique to a degree.  I would even be willing to go so far as to say his final acts are heroic.  However, know that while I watched what I am about to describe to you, I was thinking about what Mike Davis (Chris Hemsworth) could be doing differently with his life.

What Mike is doing at the beginning of Crime 101 is preparing for a heist.  He is meticulous in his preparation to steal diamonds from jewel couriers who operate in the early morning hours.  He knows everything about them down to where they live and the fake stones they have in the briefcase.  After getting the genuine articles from around the ankle of one of the transporters, he is about to take off when one variable he could not have anticipated presents itself in the partner carrier having a hidden gun.  The weapon misfires, breaking glass and wounding Mike’s head before he slams on the gas to make good his getaway.  Interspersed with this action, we are introduced to Sharon Combs (Halle Berry), an insurance broker for an agency that caters only to the super wealthy.  She is trying to woo Steven Monroe (Tate Donovan), whose mansion features a number of expensive art pieces and other precious items.  One of these is his fiancée, Adrienne (Andra Nechita).  What causes Sharon to lose the deal is Sharon mistaking Adrienne for Steven’s daughter.  Still, when Sharon gets to the office, she tries to present the situation as being a possibility because she is worried about the damage it might do to her push to become a partner at the firm.  Regardless, it is clear from her interactions with her co-workers that they do not value her services as they should be.  The person who values what Mike does is a man known as Money (Nick Nolte), who essentially acts as Mike’s fence.  Money is also the only one with whom Mike shares his plans.  This includes an upcoming Santa Barbara job that is supposed to take place during day time.  Instead, Mike is concocting a new theft that involves Sharon.  He does not reveal anything specific, but definitively turns down the Santa Barbara one because of the risk.  One of these added risks is the increased police scrutiny, led by Detective Lou Lubesnick (Mark Ruffalo).  Even though everyone else in the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), including his partner, Detective Tillman (Corey Hawkins), thinks Detective Lubesnick is crazy, he is the only one who believes a series of burglaries along the 101 freeway are the work of one man.  Or is it?  The audience know Mike by now, and have seen him disagree with Money.  Because of that minor squabble, Money contacts Ormon (Barry Keoghan), a younger, dirtbike riding burglar.  Ormon is provided the Santa Barbara mission, which he carries out violently and with little regard for the victims.  Detectives Lubesnick and Tillman are called to the scene, which seems tailormade for the former’s theory, but he does not feel that way since Mike had never hurt anyone physically.  Such things are far from Mike’s mind as he has met Maya (Monica Barbaro), a young woman with whom he had a minor car accident.  She is suspicious of him when he tries to simply give her cash for the situation, but she insists on giving him her number and insurance information.  Instead, it turns into him asking her to dinner.  Once the night is over, Mike sees news footage of inside the jewelry store where the Santa Barbara robbery happened.  As a result, he angrily goes to see Money, threatening to walk away for good if anything like this happens again.  Now feeling threatened, Money once more gets in touch with Ormon, telling the young man to follow Mike and steal from the thief during his next scheme involving Sharon.  To that end, Mike, with some help from a hacker, is able to gain access to Sharon’s email.  With this insight, he learns about her employment history, inferring her frustration over not being made partner.  He uses this information to lure her into helping him, which involves boosting money and jewels from the upcoming nuptials between Adrienne and Steven.  Unfortunately, Ormon has found out where Sharon lives.  Breaking into her house one night, he demands to know what she has told Mike.  After being attacked, the person she turns to is Detective Lubesnick.  Her timing is not the best, though, as he has been suspended following the shooting of a suspect that is blamed on him despite him not pulling the trigger.  All the same, he offers to help, and she reveals everything she had intended to do with Mike.  This also fits with the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) evidence found from the first heist we see, which gives Detective Lubesnick his first break in the case.  Speaking of case, he goes to the airport to intercept the intended courier for Steven’s valuables.  In this guise, Detective Lubesnick is the one Mike picks up to bring to the hotel where Adrienne and Steven are staying before their wedding.  Also on the way into the room is Ormon, who bursts in, wounds Steven, disarms Mike, and points a gun at Detective Lubesnick.  Yet, Mike is able to shoot and kill Ormon.  For saving his life, Detective Ormon lets Mike escape without the loot.

To this Catholic, what this ending to Crime 101 sounds like is a criminal getting away with his misdeeds.  I also saw this coming.  The villain is Ormon, and the reason Detective Lubesnick is able to let Mike get away is because the younger man is close enough to Mike’s pattern that the thefts can be pinned on Ormon.  To this point, though, I have not revealed much about Mike’s character that might make this bending of the rules by Detective Lubesnick make sense story-wise.  In fact, Mike’s backstory is one that can tug at the heartstrings of any Christian.  For most of the film, he remains a mystery, which is a source of frustration for Maya.  When she first comes to his apartment, she soon notices that there are no pictures of him or his family.  This is because we later learn that he had been raised in foster care.  Providing homes for the orphaned is something the Church has done for centuries, though this particular provider is a private citizen.  Regardless, it is good to know that there was somebody out there willing to give help to those in need.  That sacrifice is marred by what Mike does later in life.  His justification does little to change this view.  Essentially, he remembers his life of poverty, and is willing to do whatever it takes to never again experience that situation.  He does have rules, such as no violence and having a number to attain in terms of how much cash he has stolen before he stops being a criminal.  None of this matters in the eyes of God, unless one has a change of heart and is truly contrite.  One can say this is what happens with Mike in the closing minutes of the film, and the fact that he shoots Ormon accentuates the gravity of the moment.  All the same, the ends do not justify the means.

Interestingly, there are other means for approaching life that are discussed in Crime 101.  As the film begins, we hear a series of things said by a meditation app that are supposed to be how Sharon wakes up every morning.  The words are meant to reframe the hearer’s perception of the things going on around her or him.  What struck this Catholic about them is how much they are like Catholic teachings.  What they underscore, and this can be said of Mike more generally, is how much this world and the people in it are searching for answers.  There were three specific ones that drew my attention that I will loosely quote: you hold the power to create all you desire out of nothing; that power will guide you on your journey; and open yourself to the universe and trust in the unfolding of your life.  There are two ways to interpret these sayings as a God-fearing person.  First, they can be understandably dismissed as part and parcel of the kind of bland, new age philosophy that demands zero commitment from any of its adherents.  The universe simply “is,” and therefore it is whatever you create it to be.  The other is to look at it as a parallel to Scripture, particularly Genesis, where God created the universe from formlessness.  However, it implies that there was always God, so this is problematic.  Also, the other two lines can be said to contradict the first.  Since there never really was “nothing,” a power had to make everything else, and that power is God.  It is God that guides your journey, if you let Him, and the one to whom we trust our lives.  What is slightly frustrating is that it speaks to a longing within our souls for the divine, but a lack of a willingness to let it be defined.  Instead, we try to define it for ourselves instead of doing it the other way around and letting God do it for us.

Of course, God is not going to watch Crime 101 for you, though I am not sure I would recommend it.  I confess to it being a solid story that all fits together.  However, it does contain some questionable material.  Though it is never explicit, there are brief moments of pornography in it, which I did not think would be present before I saw it.  Hence, be warned.