My Thoughts on “Crime 101” (2026)

Note: 

This was written from Saturday March 14, 2026 to Sunday March 15, 2026, before I posted my 199th post and 200th post. I also have the wrote while I didn’t have Internet 🛜, so I wasn’t able to make the edits that I wanted, I didn’t have all the information I just worked with what I had, which is kind of tough with this movie because it is so complicated and the plot is kind hard to describe. Not only that, but I don’t even remember any of the characters’ names, and I got just got out of it. That should tell you how memorable those characters are and how memorable this movie is. But, I don’t want to start complaining about the movie yet, I’ll leave that up to the review. 

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(This is the poster for Crime 101 (2026).) 

Well, I did not expect to be seeing this movie. It had been so long since I had seen a movie in theaters, that I was starting to think that the next movie I was going to be able to see while in theaters was The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. It comes out in April, I just don’t know when. I saw a commercial for Old Spice of all things, they did a tie-in with The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, they’re selling new products that are themed after the movie, and the commercial said that movie is coming out April 1, 2026, April Fools Day. I checked and it is actually coming out on that day. I can’t believe it’s coming out April Fool’s Day, it doesn’t seem the best day to release a Mario movie. People will think you’re just trying to prank them, or they’ll see the April 1st release date as a bad omen and assume the movie’s bad. I don’t think it will, I think it’s going to be good. It’s the movie I’m looking forward to the most this year, and I liked the first one, and this seems to be more of the same. 

It would have to be uniquely bad for me to say that it’s bad, and I just don’t think it will. And some critics said the first one was bad, and I liked it, so, I don’t really trust critics when comes to these Mario movies by Illumination. I also can’t believe they did a tie-in with Old Spice. Old Spice is a hygiene, fragrance, and grooming brand for men ♂︎, marketed to men ♂︎, and is not really something for kids. It’s not a kiddie brand by any means, and they don’t have a kiddie version of Old Spice, like Old Spice Kids (or would it be Young Spice since it would be the kid version 🤔) doesn’t exist. It’s a pretty adult brand, it’s for adults and teenagers. Teenage boys ♂︎ who want to smell nice. I guess they finally realized that adults like Mario too, and will want to go see the movie too when it comes out, so why not do a tie-in and sell products that are Mario themed. For those men ♂︎ and teenage boys ♂︎ who like Mario, and will definitely go see The Super Mario Galaxy Movie when it comes out. 

I haven’t been able to check these things and keep up-to-date because I don’t have Internet 🛜 at the moment. The only time I get to use Internet 🛜 now is when I go to a public place that has free Wi-Fi 🛜, or if I visit a family member’s house that does have Internet 🛜 and they give me their password. That’s the way it has to be until we’re able to pay off our bill, which hopefully will be in a few weeks. My dad’s going to get his lawsuit money 💵, and it’s a pretty big amount. The only thing that the law firm that handled his case, Keller & Keller needs to do now is just do all the paperwork, and then have him come in to sign some papers, then he’ll be give him his check. Then we’ll be good, we won’t be broke anymore. My aunt’s going to make sure of that since she’s going to handle the money 💵 for us, she’s going to hold onto it for us. We came to agreement with her, and she said she’ll take care of it for us. 

Because we don’t trust ourselves to handle that money 💵, and we want to make sure that money 💵 lasts, and keeps growing and growing, so we can get the things need, do the things we need to do, as well as just doing stuff we want to do. We want to start taking vacations, and getting out more, and doing more fun stuff that we can’t do right now because we don’t have enough money 💵 to do it. Right now, the way things are now, we’re just barely getting by. We just barely have enough to get the stuff we need around our house like toilet paper 🧻, paper towels, flushable wipes, disinfectant wipes, laundry detergent, softener, bleach, dish soap, hand soap, things like that. And of course food and drink on top of that. Basic need to survive, and maintain your home. And the money 💵 we’re currently getting through my grandma’s Social Security just isn’t enough to cover it all. It’s not enough of an income to support three people, including one (my dad) who eats all our food and drinks our drinks. 

He’s addicted to soda man, he drinks like three or four cans a day. We usually go through 12 packs within a few days, and then when we get the bigger 24 packs or whatever, it only lasts a week. My dad is not good at making things last, especially when those things are food and drinks, namely soda because he doesn’t even drink anything else. He doesn’t even drink as much coffee ☕️ as he used to, he used to be a huge coffee drinker ☕️, he used to drink more coffee ☕️ than me. But now, it’s all just soda, nothing but soda. He won’t drink anything else unless he’s absolutely forced to, and there’s nothing else left. Maybe it also those drugs he was taking why he drank so much coffee ☕️, all that meth he did, who knows? I know it’s the marijuana that he smokes that’s the reason why he’s always snacking all the time because Mary Jane makes you hungry, it gives you the munchies. If my dad wasn’t a pothead, we probably wouldn’t go through so much food so quickly. But, what can do you do? We just put up it with because it keeps him from doing the harder drugs like meth, and also because he’s going to give us some of his money 💵 through his lawsuit. He told us that money 💵 is for all of us. So, even if he smokes weed, eats all our food, and does bare minimum to help around the house a lot of the time, at least we’re getting money 💵 from him, and that money 💵 is coming soon 😁. Hopefully, I can start contributing to making that money 💵 grow by making money 💵 off of this blog. Or making money 💵 off of my writings somehow. 

I already have a Patreon account (I opened it so I could buy Brandon Tenold’s review of Anaconda (1997) whenever I have the money 💵 because it’s unavailable in its entirety on YouTube, just as YouTube Shorts), all I need is a big following, and then I switch to a being creator instead of just a user on Patreon, and people can start donating money 💵 to me to support me and my work. Because considering the amount of money 💵 I spend and my grandma and my aunt spend to get me the movies and games I review on my blog, and considering how much time and work I put into writing these posts, I should be making some kind of money 💵 off of it. And yes, Mary Jane is another way of saying marijuana without having to say marijuana. My grandma told me it was from the 1970s, the decade she grew up, people used to call marijuana Mary Jane or MJ a lot. As someone who was only ever familiar with the Marvel character named Mary Jane, I was confused 😕, and I was only ever able to think of the Mary Jane from the Marvel comics, Spider-Man’s girlfriend, or one of his girlfriends since he was also dating Gwen Stacy for a while, until she died. Both in the comics, and in the movie, The Amazing Spider-Man 2. I mean, there’s a song on the Judgment Night soundtrack that’s called “I Love You Mary Jane ❤️” and that song’s clearly about marijuana, so I guess even in the early 1990s, people were still using Mary Jane or MJ to refer to marijuana. But because of my grandma, I can’t help because call marijuana Mary Jane or MJ. Sometimes I call it “grass” too, and whenever I do, it gets a huge laugh 😆 out of everybody.

Speaking of confusion 😕, that’s a word you’re probably going to see a lot throughout this review, just a heads up. I was expecting to review this movie after doing my Riddick (2013) review. I was expecting to be gearing up to do my post recommending movies for Double Toasted 🍞 to review on their Bad Movie Roast/Bad Movie Review series and Retro Review series. And then after that, I was finally going to write a review of Cowboy Bebop (1998) after I had added to my list of things to review two years ago. It was a long time coming, and the only reason it’s going to happen now is that I can’t review any of the other series I’ve wanted to review because they’re all on streaming. And I can’t exactly stream anything without Internet 🛜. So, none of those other series available to me, I might as well review Cowboy Bebop (1998) while it’s still on my mind. I got in the mood to review it after started listening to the soundtrack again in my iTunes library because again, no Internet 🛜, nothing else to do. So prepare yourselves, and I’ll see you, space cowboys 🤠…whenever I’m able to post it. But my grandma decided to take me to a movie, just to get me out of the house and do something fun, so I’m not all cooped up at home, not really doing anything since like I said, we have no Internet 🛜. So, I chose this movie, Crime 101 (2026) because it looked like the only movie that was playing that my grandma would be into and would actually like. And I thought it was going to be good. I wouldn’t have picked it if I didn’t think it was going to be good. We saw the trailer for it when we went to go see Greenland 2: Migration 🇬🇱, which was the last movie we saw in theaters, and it looked pretty good. 

It looked it would be a decent crime thriller, with lots of action, and it had a couple of Marvel actors, Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo, and also technically Nick Nolte. He was in Hulk (2003), playing Bruce Banner’s estranged dad, David Banner, which wasn’t an MCU movie (I guess it became one by default once they introduced the multiverse, which made every Marvel movie canon to the MCU, or I guess MCM now, Marvel Cinematic Multiverse), but it is a Marvel movie, and therefore, Nick Nolte is a Marvel actor. There are few actors who are both Marvel and DC actors, like Laurence Fishburne. He was in a couple of DC movies, DCEU movies, and then he was in an MCU movie. But, as far as I know, Nick Nolte’s only ever been in a Marvel movie. I reviewed Hulk (2003) a couple of years ago if you’re interested in reading that. 

The movie features one of the actors from Michael Bay’s 6 Underground, Corey Hawkins, who was the sniper and former special operator of Magnet’s crew, the Ghosts in that film. Blaine is his name, and then when he joins the Ghosts, he goes under the name Seven because he’s technically the seventh member of the team. But after Dave Franco’s character, Six/David dies, Seven/Blaine becomes the sixth member of the team, meaning Magnet’s team is back to having six members and the title isn’t lying. Still think they should’ve used the “6 Underground” song by Sneaker Pimps in the end credits. Such a missed opportunity SMH 😒. Here, he plays Mark Ruffalo’s character’s jaded partner who turns on him and sides with another cop against him, after that other cop planted evidence on a robber he accidentally shot and killed in order to try to make it look like it was in self defense. “He was going for a gun, you all saw it!” that sort of thing. A lot of excitement, a lot of intrigue. And this movie does have intrigue, but not a whole lot of action. It has too much intrigue if you ask me. 

I actually thought the title was pretty generic when I first saw it, like Crime 101, really? That’s what you’re going with? That’s the most generic title for a criminal thriller I’ve ever seen. That’s almost like the title of a fake movie that you’d see characters in another movie or a TV show watching, you know, like a movie-within-a-movie? That’s what that title makes me think. But, I suppose it isn’t as bad as the title to The Drama, that romantic drama ❤️ starring Robert Pattinson and Zendaya, which may already be out or is yet to come out. Like, seriously 🙄? The Drama? That’s the best you can come with 😠? That is the most generic, most nondescript title I’ve ever seen for any movie, not romantic dramas ❤️. I mean, what is that even suppose to tell me? That it’s a drama 🙄? What kind of drama? What’s it even about? Why not just call it The Romantic Drama ❤️ while you’re at it? Or better yet, The Wedding 💒, since it’s basically about a wedding 💒 that goes wrong? I read a description of what that movie’s about on Wikipedia, and it’s basically about this couple who about to get married 💍, but on the day of their wedding 💒, they learn disturbing truths about each other that I guess gives them cold feet about wanting to marry each other 💍. It’s an A24 movie, so you know it’s going to be a straightforward romantic drama ❤️ about two getting married 💍, there has be something disturbing or off about them that makes wonder if they even should get married 💍 or not. Everything has to be a deconstruction for A24, they can’t just let things be, they can’t let things be happy unless the characters go through a ton of trauma first. Plus it stars Robert Pattinson and Zendaya, and no way either of them are going to star in a conventional romantic drama ❤️ or romantic comedy ❤️, especially romantic comedy ❤️. There has to be something more to it for either to consider doing it. 

I mean, Zendaya starred in Challengers, which was far from being a conventional or straightforward romance ❤️ or sports drama, and of course, Robert Pattinson has been in all kinds of weird movies. So, this kind of up his alley. I feel like he’s still trying to shake off the stench of Twilight, like he’s doing all these weird movies and unconventional roles to prove that he’s not just “the Twilight guy ♂︎,” he’s not just Edward Cullen. He doesn’t want to be solely defined by that role. But it’s been over a decade since those movies came out, I think you made your point dude. No one sees you as the Twilight guy ♂︎ anymore 😒. You don’t need to keep proving yourself, or go into every role thinking you need to prove something to somebody. If you really wanted to go the extra mile, why not call it The Wedding Drama 💒, since it’s about wedding drama 💒. It would be both a simple and straightforward title, there would be no mistaking about what it is, it’s right there in the title. I like movies with titles that cut to the chase and tell you exactly what they’re about from just the title alone. Snakes on a Plane 🐍✈️, Hobo with a Shotgun, The Island of Giant Insects 🦋 (that’s a movie right?), Zombie Strippers 🧟‍♀️, Shoot ‘Em Up, things like that. The Drama tells you nothing, it’s meaningless. It’s a dogshit title. It’s like calling an action movie, The Action, or a horror movie, The Horror 🙄. Why not just go full Kim Possible, and call the movie, That’s So The Drama? That’s how I feel, you can’t tell no different.

But after seeing the movie, it turns out that there’s a completely different reason why the movie’s called Crime 101. It’s not just the movie’s a crime thriller, it’s because Chris Hemsworth’s character robs people along the 101 highway 🛣️. Is that real highway 🛣️ in Los Angeles? Someone in the comments who’s from LA, is there a real 101 highway, or freeway, or interstate 🛣️ or whatever in LA? The whole plot or premise of this movie kind of hinges on there being a real 101 highway 🛣️. Chris Hemsworth’s character is supposed to be from LA, he grew up poor, and that’s why he’s a thief, and only robs rich people 🤑, because he didn’t have money 💵 growing up, and is doing everything he can to ensure he does have money 💵. Even if that means he has to engage in criminal activity in order to get it. He’s not some Robin Hood giving the money 💵 and jewels 💎 he stole to the poor, the kind of people he used to be, no, he’s keeping it all for himself. He’s doing this to try to make himself rich 🤑. Although he does act morally superior about it because he only steals from rich people 🤑 😒. Just because you steal rich people 🤑 doesn’t make you a good person, you’re still a criminal, you’re committing crimes, and breaking the law. You’re still a bad guy 😠. Even the money 💵 and expensive belongings he does give to some people, he gives to people who are not exactly rich 🤑, but also not poor. 

They seem like people who are fairly well off, maybe Mark Ruffalo’s character isn’t, but Halle Berry’s character certainly is. She worked at an insurance firm that insures rich people 🤑, even if she didn’t get the top position she wanted, she still made a lot of money 💵. Money 💵 that most other people would kill to have. So, she definitely wasn’t struggling financially when Mark Ruffalo’s character gave her those illegal diamonds 💎 that Chris Hemsworth’s character gave to him after he let him go. I don’t really feel that sorry for her to be honest. I feel a little bit more sorry for Mark Ruffalo’s character, but not that much since he’s a cop, and he let Chris Hemsworth’s character get away with everything, even though he’s the guy ♂︎ he’s been chasing after all these years. He pretty ruined his career at the police department, trying to find this guy ♂︎ because none of the other cops at the department (especially the chief) believed that the 101 Thief was real, or that robberies were all connected. Instead, he just pins everything on the motorcycle guy 🏍️♂︎ that Nick Nolte hired to replace Chris Hemsworth because he thought he was going soft. Then he accepts a car that Chris Hemsworth bought with the stolen money 💵 from one of his previous robberies. This was a gross obstruction of justice, like this is straight up bribery isn’t it? 

Mark Ruffalo’s character actually pretty corrupt for letting this guy ♂︎ go, blaming his crimes on someone else, and then accepting a car from him that he bought with illicit funds from one of his previous robberies. In fact, all of the cops in this movie were pieces of shit, even Corey Hawkins’s character. I hated every single of them. There was no one to root for on the cop side, the side that’s supposed to be on the right side of the law. I mean, I was rooting for Mark Ruffalo’s character, but only because he was a burnt out detective, who was down on his luck, and his life looked like it sucked, and this case was the only thing keeping him going, even when he was a laughing stock in the rest of the department, even he was pretty much a pariah who no one really liked or trusted. But then the movie had to go and mess that up by having him let Chris Hemsworth go when he had him right where he wanted him 😤. Can’t accuse this movie of being “copaganda” that’s for sure. This movie’s pretty full ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards). Whether that was intentional or not, I really can’t say. Given what this movie is, and how the story’s told, and who’s supposed in the right and who’s supposed to be in the wrong, I have feeling it was mostly unintentional. This movie falls into that cliché that a lot of crime thrillers or crime dramas fall into where the cop that’s been chasing after the main character, who’s a criminal, often times all their life, often at the cost of their family and their reputation, and then when he or she has him or her right where he or she wants him or her, they them let them go 😤. Usually because they killed a worse criminal. 

Gone in 60 Seconds (2000) did this, The Fast and the Furious did this, Point Break (1991) did this, and many other movies have done this. It’s not new or groundbreaking. And in this case, it really pissed me off 😤 because it feels like Chris Hemsworth suffered no consequences or repercussions for what he was doing all his life, and got away Scott free. He got to be with his girlfriend, that girl ♀︎ who crashed into his car, and who he started hitting it off with. The movie focused way too much on that subplot, especially since it doesn’t have a satisfying conclusion. None of the plot lines in this have satisfying conclusions, one of them doesn’t even have a conclusion at all. Of course, since his character’s supposed to be from LA, that means Chris Hemsworth is putting on an American accent 🇺🇸 in this movie, and it’s okay. He had a pretty decent American accent 🇺🇸, and he didn’t slip out of it too much like a lot of non-American actors do when they try to do American accents 🇺🇸. There are few moments here and there he kind of slips out of it, and his Australian accent 🇦🇺 slips through, but those parts are few and far between and easy to forgive and let slide. I suppose the movie being called Crime 101 then would be sort of like if someone made a crime thriller that took place in Albuquerque, and called it Crime I-40, as in, Crime Interstate 40 🛣️. 

Before I really dive into reviewing this movie, I already kind of started reviewing it already and have said a lot about it already, there is one more unrelated thing ☝️ that I would like to address first. It’s something that I mentioned in my Greenland 2: Migration 🇬🇱 review, and I would give an update to. It turns out my hunch about Wuthering Heights (2026) being controversial was correct. It was controversial, just not for the reason that I thought it would be when I first brought it up in my Greenland 2 🇬🇱 review. There was so controversial about the age difference between Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, just not in the way that I thought. It turns out that Margot Robbie did the same thing on the press tour for Wuthering Heights (2026) that Glen Powell did when he was on the press tour for Anyone But You, where she pretended to have an affair, or at least, had feelings for Jacob Elordi in real life. Like, she talked how codependent she was on him, and he did all these nice things for her during their downtime when they weren’t filming the movie. 

She basically tried to make it seem like there was more to their relationship than just being fellow actors, co-stars working on the same movie together, you know co-workers, or colleagues. All to generate buzz for the movie on social media. To get people talking, and talk they did. This whole stunt of hers generated immense backlash online, not just on social media websites like Twitter 🐦, Facebook, or Instagram, but also video sharing websites like YouTube and TikTok, mostly from women ♀︎, who questioned why Margot Robbie would even consider doing this, especially since she’s married 💍 and has a child. A lot of women ♀︎ just saw her behavior on the press tour, pretending to have an affair or have feelings to Jacob Elordi when she has a husband and a kid, as inappropriate and kind of scummy.  Personally, I am so glad that Margot Robbie got backlash for doing that, and that backlash was mostly from women ♀︎, because usually when women ♀︎ do this, when women ♀︎ engage in this kind of behavior, it’s usually given a pass. Whereas when a man ♂︎ does stuff like this, he’s rightfully given shit for it. 

But not this time, this time women ♀︎ didn’t let this one slide because it was another woman ♀︎ doing it. Women ♀︎ are good at keeping each other in check (most of the time), when one of them is acting bad or is taking advantage of other women ♀︎. I wish men ♂︎ were better at doing the same. That’s not to say that there aren’t men ♂︎ out there who call other men out for being shitty (and being shitty to other men ♂︎), but not nearly enough in my opinion. This is something we as men ♂︎ can learn from women ♀︎. It’s funny that I’m saying all this during Women’s History Month ♀︎. I missed International Women’s Day ♀︎, but it turns out that the whole month of March is Women’s History Month ♀︎. So, I’ve got plenty of time to go and praise women ♀︎ 😊. I also planned on mentioning International Women’s Day ♀︎ in my Double Toasted 🍞 post, but I missed it, so I’ll probably have to change it to Women’s History Month ♀︎. Even if women ♀︎ are always perfect at it either. If this backlash against Margot Robbie had come mostly from men ♂︎, it would’ve been so easy to just write it off as just sexism, but because it was mostly from women ♀︎, it can’t be, although some will still try. 

But still, what she didn’t wasn’t nearly as bad as what Glen Powell did because he actually cheated on his girlfriend while making Anyone But You with Sydney Sweeney. He actually went through with it, and actually did something with Sydney Sweeney. He didn’t just allude to having feelings for her like Margot Robbie did with Jacob Elordi for Wuthering Heights (2026). He actually cheated on his girlfriend with Sydney Sweeney. To me, that’s way more scummy than what Margot Robbie did. Glen Powell actually crossed a line, he went there, and once you go there, once you cross that line, then I am no longer on your side, I am officially 100% against you 😠. As if I didn’t already have enough of a reason to like Glen Powell. I was just kind of tired of seeing seeing him all the time in movies, and I didn’t appreciate how Hollywood seemed to be forcing him down people’s throats, but this just makes me dislike the guy ♂︎. I think he’s a scumbag. No wonder he’s so good at playing douchebag characters because he is one in real life 😤! There seems to be this unspoken competition between certain men ♂︎ to see who can be the worst boyfriends and husbands. 

But this is not the main reason why Wuthering Heights (2026) was so controversial. The main reasons why it was so controversial was mainly to do with the casting of Jacob Elordi in the main male lead role ♂︎ as Heathcliff (no not the cartoon cat 🐈, I wish 🙄), and how much the movie deviates from the source material. What a surprise? A movie based on a book 📖 that doesn’t follow the source material at all 😒. From what I understand, it’s especially egregious here because the original Wuthering Heights book 📖 is not a romance ❤️, it’s not a romantic drama ❤️, and you aren’t supposed to root for the characters or their relationship. These are terrible people, and you’re supposed to think they’re terrible while reading it. That’s how a lot of fans of the book 📖 described it when the movie came out. It’s a story about villains, who ultimately lose in the end. But, the movie took this story about horrible people being horrible, and turned it into a full on romance ❤️,  making it as sensual and erotic as possible. When the book 📖 the movie’s based on isn’t sexual at all from what I understand. A lot of fans of the book 📖 who made videos about this movie when it came out said that the moment they saw the trailer and it described the book 📖 as one of the greatest romances ❤️ of all time, they knew it was going to be a faithful adaptation and that the filmmakers fundamentally misunderstood the book 📖  in pretty much every conceivable way. They turned it into porn 🔞 for women ♀︎, that’s what this movie is. 

It’s just as Jeremy Jahns described it, it’s “socially acceptable porn 🔞 for women ♀︎.” It has pretty much the same appeal as the Fifty Shades of Grey movies or the 365 Days movies. At least Heathcliff isn’t a sex trafficker like the guy ♂︎ from the 365 Days, Massimo Torricelli. And the movie received mostly negative reviews. All the reviews I saw of it at least were pretty negative, with the harshest criticisms coming from fans of the book 📖. Although I’m sure all the women ♀︎ who came to this movie for salacious reasons got a kick out of this movie. They got what they came for, and walked out satisfied since it seems like it was made specifically for that audience. That very narrow audience. As for why Jacob Elordi being cast as Heathcliff was so controversial, it’s because Jacob Elordi is obviously a white man ♂︎ and the character Heathcliff is described in the book 📖 as being a dark skinned man ♂︎. Heathcliff in the novel 📖 is a person of color, possibly from India 🇮🇳. So, this yet another example of whitewashing 😒, although this is movie doesn’t have the same excuse as Ghost in the Shell (2017), where it was actually apart of the story and it was actually making a statement against that sort of thing. 

This review isn’t going to be as long as my Riddick (2013) review, and hopefully it won’t take me as long to complete as that one did, because I have a lot less to say about this movie than I did Riddick (2013). As you can probably tell by now, from I’ve said about it already, I didn’t really care for this movie. My grandma didn’t care for it either. I could tell she wasn’t into it because she fell asleep 😴 during it, I woke up almost half through it and she begrudgingly watched the rest, and then after we got out of it, she was telling me she didn’t get it, and I don’t blame her. This movie is so complicated, and convoluted. It’s hard to wrap your head around some of this stuff. I mean I understood the basic gist of it, that it’s this thief with a heart of gold 💛 I guess 🙄, who robs rich people 🤑 and then pockets the money 💵 he gained from robbing them, he doesn’t like to hurt or kill anyone during his robberies. Even when someone shoots at him, he just runs away or drive away instead of shooting back. It’s not until the end of the movie where he does actually kill someone, but that was only to save Mark Ruffalo’s character. Every time, Chris Hemsworth’s character doesn’t shoot anybody, even though he carries a gun during his robberies. He likes to avoid violence during his robberies as much as he can. Because he’s a little softie on the inside. 

But, the part I didn’t understand was the whole courier thing, like what was up with couriers, and why was the insurance company worried about the couriers and making sure they were protected or whatever. That was one aspect of the movie that wasn’t fleshed out or explained very well, what was the importance of the couriers? In fact, how exactly does the insurance company tie into all this, and how does Halle Berry’s character tie into all this? Why did Chris Hemsworth’s character specifically choose her, other than she’s a disgruntled employee and he maybe thought that he could exploit that? By the end of the movie, I still didn’t fully understand why she was so important and why she needed to be apart of this story. Such a huge part of the story too, besides Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo, she’s the character who gets the most amount of screen time in this movie. She has one of the three main subplots in this movie. They spent so much time with her, and yet by the end of it, I didn’t understand what the point of her character was. I feel you could cut her out of the movie entirely, and the movie wouldn’t be that much different. 

The same goes for that romance subplot ❤️ between Chris Hemsworth and that chick ♀︎ who crashed into his car, and who he tries to make his only salvation out of this life of crime he finds himself stuck in. That subplot went no way, at least no where interesting, and all did it was take up time that could’ve spent on other things, much more important things. Like Nick Nolte’s character. I just didn’t care about those two, I wasn’t rooting their relationship whatsoever. I think they’re bad for each other, and that woman ♀︎ should’ve left him and never went back. I don’t care if he showed her a family photo of him and his brothers as kids, that doesn’t make up for everything else, it doesn’t make up for all the lies, and for being a criminal on the run. I wouldn’t have gone back to him if that were me. That guy ♂︎’s too much a toxic influence on me, he’s no good, I don’t care if he grew up poor, go take your sob story somewhere else, to someone who cares because I don’t. I don’t feel sympathy for you whatsoever 😒. 

I mentioned earlier that one of the plot lines in this movie had no resolution to it whatsoever, and this is the one I’m talking about. We never find out what happens to Nick Nolte after the big robbery at the end of the movie went wrong and the motorcycle guy 🏍️♂︎ was killed. It’s like the writers just forget about him because after that last scene where he gives his last orders to the motorcycle guy 🏍️♂︎, we never see him again afterwards. It’s subplot that’s just left hanging with no real resolution whatsoever. We don’t even know what Chris Hemsworth’s character’s relation to Nick Nolte’s character is, is he his father? An uncle? His grandfather? Or he is just some guy ♂︎ he met in the criminal underworld when he went down that path, and started working for to try to make money 💵? The movie never really explains that to us. 

We know his relationship with Nick Nolte is a bit frosty because every time they interact they’re always arguing, and he’s always telling him he doesn’t want to do what he asks him to do, and then Nick Nolte pretty much tries to replace him with the motorcycle guy 🏍️♂︎, who’s much more reckless, violent, and unhinged compared to Chris Hemsworth. I will say that Nick Nolte’s voice sounds pretty rough 😬. Like he sounds worse than the last time I saw in anything, which was Angel Has Fallen, and that was already a few years ago. Now he’s much older now, and his voice is even rougher, more gravely than before. I could barely understand what he was saying in this movie, all of his scenes are very dialogue heavy. This is a very wordy or talkie movie, like a lot of the story is conveyed through dialogue and people talking, usually at restaurants, or cafes, or some kind of public place that looks nice, that looks picturesque.

The only places that aren’t like that are the apartments the characters are all staying in, the police station, the office building of the insurance company, and the market that Chris Hemsworth meets Nick Nolte, and of course, that gravel place underneath a bridge that Nick Nolte goes to talk to the motorcycle guy 🏍️♂︎ while in his car. I mean, it’s LA, so of course these places are all going to be nice. I felt like I needed subtitles every time he spoke. That’s how bad his voice has gotten. There’s also jewelry shop owner 💎 from the beginning of the movie, what his importance to everything, other than he’s the first guy ♂︎ to get robbed in the movie. We didn’t get any resolution with him, like what happened to him? The last time we see him in the entire movie is when Halle Berry is forcing him to take a lie detector test, and him telling her that it’s pointless to give him a lie detector test, he didn’t do anything wrong, they’re just trying to deny him his claim so they won’t have to insure him, and also the company that she works for is shady and all the people they insure are bad people. He specifically said “parasites,” but you get the gist. I just realized now that the actor who plays the jewelry shop owner 💎 was the brother of the dictator guy ♂︎ in 6 Underground, that one the Ghosts free and install as the new leader of Turgistan after they overthrew his brother. So, I guess Corey Hawkins wasn’t the only actor from 6 Underground that was in this movie. 

I know that Jeremy Jahns said in his review that this movie was basically “dime store Heat,” pretty much implying that any crime thriller that comes out is just trying to copy Heat, and I just don’t think that’s right. Heat doesn’t have a monopoly on crime thrillers, and not every new crime thriller needs to be compared to Heat. The biggest problem with this movie is how complicated it is. I feel like this is one of those movies that thinks that the more complicated they make the plot, smarter it will, that is just not the case at all. Making your plot complicated doesn’t make it smarter, just makes it hard to follow, and this movie is pretty hard to follow at times. That’s not just because I had to get up and use the bathroom while the movie was playing. I tried to pay as close attention as I could to what was happening, and what the characters were saying, and I just couldn’t get any of it. It was way too complicated, and the movie didn’t do a good enough job at explaining these things so that people who aren’t familiar with the world of couriers, insurance companies for the super wealthy, police procedurals, and of course the criminal underworld, can actually follow along with what’s happening. But, it wasn’t that. It was all mud, it all just noise. One thing I did not know about this movie until after I got out of it, and started writing this review of it is that it’s actually based on a book 📖. A novella technically, under the same name, Crime 101, by Don Winslow. I wonder if any of this is explained or fleshed out better in the novella, I doubt it. I wouldn’t be surprised if if all this other stuff was added in for the film, and novella was just focused on the jewel thief 💎 plot line, and the whole cat and mouse game 🐈🐁 between him and the cop, because novellas are typically not that long. They’re longer than short stories, but not as long as full on novels 📖, they’re somewhere in between. 

And on top of the plot being overly complicated, the movie’s way too long as well. This movie is 140 minutes long, or 2 hours and 20 minutes, which is almost as long as a Michael Bay Transformers movie. After seeing the movie, I can confidently say that it didn’t need to be that long. The kind of story this movie tells, and the way it is, this did not need to be 2 hours and 20 minutes. It should’ve been half that in my opinion. It should’ve been an hour or so. Like 115 minutes would’ve been a better runtime for this movie than 140 minutes. They could’ve trimmed this movie down by a significant portion, cut out the romance subplot ❤️ that would save you at least 20 minutes, and also cut out the Halle Berry and insurance subplot because it really adds nothing to story, and drags it down, and makes the movie way longer than it needed to be or should’ve been. At a certain point, I was just sitting there waiting for this thing to end 😑 because it felt it wouldn’t end, it just kept going and going. I didn’t like any characters, I didn’t gravitate towards any of them, I even disliked a couple of them. The only character I kind of liked was Mark Ruffalo’s character, but even then, they kind of ruined his character at the end, and it kind of made me dislike him 😠. You might’ve noticed that I’ve been just referring to the characters by their actor names rather than the actual character names like I usually do, and that’s because I genuinely did not remember any of the characters’ names after watching this movie, and I didn’t give enough of a damn about them to look it up when I had Wi-Fi 🛜. That’s how little the characters resonated with me in this movie. 

The lackluster story and bad characters could’ve been made up for if this movie had some good action, but it really doesn’t. This movie isn’t an action movie at all, besides a couple of car chases here and there. I mean, it’s a crime thriller, there’s nothing that says that it needs to have action in it, but most movies like this usually have action. Like, Heat, which is often seen as the quintessential crime thriller, that movie had one of the best shootouts ever put to film, if only for the sound, which utilized the actual sound of the guns on set rather than editing in gun sound effects in post. So, right off the bat, don’t go into this movie thinking it’s going to be an action movie because it’s not. There’s no big shootouts, there’s no hand-to-hand fist fights, there’s not even any knife fights. There’s barely even a drop of blood 🩸 despite this movie being R rated. I will admit, I did feel tension during the build up to the big robbery at the end. Like I was with it, I just felt like something bad was going to happen and the robbery was going to go wrong, and possibly some people were going to die. And while that technically happens, there’s not that much to it. The motorcycle guy 🏍️♂︎ just shows up, botches the plan for both Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo, shoots the billionaire guy ♂︎ around the shoulder area, threatens to shoot Mark Ruffalo, then Chris Hemsworth shoots and kills him, saving Mark Ruffalo’s life. That’s it. It doesn’t go all True Romance ❤️ on us, and lead to some bigger shootout with lots of dead bodies. So, besides the build up to that scene, the characters are preparing for the big day, and in case of Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo, sizing each other up, this movie is lacking in excitement.

But surprisingly, come to find out, this movie has mostly received positive reviews from critics, except for maybe Jeremy Jahns, who didn’t think the movie was anything special and was just kind of okay. I think he either gave it a “I’m gonna remember in T-minus *insert time here*” or a “It might be a good time if you’re drunk 🥴” ratings, which are two of his lowest ratings, just barely above “Dogshit” which is absolute worst rating. You know a movie’s bad if it has a “Dogshit” rating from Jeremy Jahns. And it seems to be doing well at the box office, or may not because so far it’s grossed $66.1 million 💵 worldwide on a budget of $90 million 💵, which is pretty big for a movie like this, but considering it stars two Marvel actors plus Halle Berry and Nick Nolte (who’s also kind of a Marvel actor too), a lot of that money 💵 probably went to paying for the actors. Because it’s not like this movie has any big elaborate set pieces that would require a huge budget to pull off because this movie is lacking in action. 

Not only that, but all the other people saw this in the theater with us (me and my grandma) seemed to like it, they seemed to like it a lot more than we did. To each their own I guess. But for me (and my grandma to lesser extent), Crime 101 (2026) was a huge disappointment. I really wanted to like this movie, but I just didn’t it. It didn’t click with me, or my grandma, at all. And I’ll probably never watch it again. This is one movie I won’t be buying on Blu-Ray 💿 or 4K 💿 when it comes out. I really wish we gone to see Shelter (2026) instead, I feel like we probably would’ve enjoyed that movie a lot more, but it wasn’t playing in theaters anymore. It came out in January, and it’s already March, so it definitely wasn’t going to be in theaters anymore at that point. It’s probably on VOD now. That’s what we get for waiting until now to see a movie in theaters 🫤. But, even if we didn’t like the movie all that much, we still had fun with. It was still fun, just getting out of the house, going to Albuquerque to see movie, eating popcorn 🍿 and drinking soda 🥤, and then going to the casino 🎰 on the way back to use Wi-Fi 🛜. It’s fun just hanging out with my grandma.