Surely the 21st century equivalent to the old Hollywood trope “Let’s put on a show!” is, judging by the movies that get made, “Let’s pull off a heist!” What that says about the evolution of our wish-fulfillment fantasies is a tad worrisome, so it’s refreshing that “American Animals,” which recreates and dissects a real 2004 robbery committed by a quartet of thrill-seeking college kids, grasps that there’s something singularly regrettable in how our popular art glorifies criminality.
And yet, for a good deal of its running time, writer-director Bart Layton’s slick, music-fueled assemblage of recreated narrative and documentary manages to be as deftly comic and suspenseful as the bank job movies from which Layton, and the incident’s perpetrators, took inspiration. Until, that is, the reality of bad decisions and corrosive entitlement act as an all-too-necessary dampener.
The crime was known as the “Transy Book Heist.
And yet, for a good deal of its running time, writer-director Bart Layton’s slick, music-fueled assemblage of recreated narrative and documentary manages to be as deftly comic and suspenseful as the bank job movies from which Layton, and the incident’s perpetrators, took inspiration. Until, that is, the reality of bad decisions and corrosive entitlement act as an all-too-necessary dampener.
The crime was known as the “Transy Book Heist.
- 5/31/2018
- by Robert Abele
- The Wrap
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