DUBAI: This Amazon crime thriller follows Mike (Chris Hemsworth), a well-groomed, well-disciplined thief who’s carried out a string of successful jewelry heists in Los Angeles.
He’s being tracked by world-weary, disheveled detective Lou Lubesnick (Mark Ruffalo, as you probably guessed from the character description — “world-weary detective” being very much his thing these days), the only cop apparently smart enough to have twigged that the heists are the work of one person.
Mike is careful and meticulous. He’s never violent. He relies on a hacker to help him identify sources who might turn on their employers and provide him with the information he needs for his work.
But when he’s grazed by a bullet while netting $3 million in diamonds, he gets cold feet about his next job. So his fence enlists a young biker, Ormon (Barry Keoghan, whose notes from the director appear to have been “Get that scenery chewed” — subtle he ain’t) to carry out the raid instead. Ormon has none of Mike’s scruples and violently assaults several of those unlucky enough to be present when he carries out the job, much to Mike’s chagrin — only exacerbated when he learns that Ormon is tracking him.
Mike, meanwhile, has met a woman he genuinely likes — Maya (a spiky and charming Monica Barbaro). But his natural lone-wolfiness, coupled with his inability to tell her what he’s actually up to most of the time hinders their budding romance. He’s also made contact with a disillusioned insurance broker, Sharon (Halle Berry), who — sick of being overlooked by her bosses — decides to give Mike the info he needs to carry out … you guessed it: One Last Job.
The climax, indeed the whole film, is slickly handled by British filmmaker Bart Layton (although the neatly tied up loose ends might not be to everyone’s taste), who elevates “Crime 101” above the slew of so-so thrillers with no little help from his cast. The emotional blank slate of Mike is a good fit for Hemsworth, whose acting chops are not his greatest gift. Ruffalo is Ruffalo. And both Berry and Barbaro bring their A-game to roles that, in other hands, could’ve been flat and one-dimensional. The result is a thriller as polished as Mike’s cherished diamonds.
