‘Crime 101’ Director On Adaptations and Working With a Star-Studded Cast
If you’re in the neighborhood for a gripping, high-stakes neo-noir thriller, look no further than Crime 101, a story about a notorious thief named Mike (Chris Hemsworth) who seems to be done with it all. On his tail is Detective Lou Lubesnick (Mark Ruffalo). Thrown into the mix is Sharon Coombs (Halle Berry), an executive in a high-end insurance company, who just wants the respect from her male superiors that she deserves.
We were able to sit down with director Bart Layton and discuss adapting the story from the novella, and what it was like giving Hemsworth room to stand out and showcase his talent.
“The novella itself is a great foundation to build on and and it had a terrific beginning and middle and end,” said Layton of the source material by Don Winslow. “And if you’ve got that you’re kind of standing on solid ground, and so then my job becomes, ‘How does that become a a big elongated movie?’ And so you start fleshing out characters and the plot. And I saw in that novella the makings of what I thought could be one of those classic-feeling heist movies or crime thrillers, but also a way of it feeling quite contemporary and also that it gave the ability to smuggle in more than just the plot. There are things to think about which is if you’re a writer you want it to have either a metaphor or something that hopefully leaves you with something to think about when you walk out rather than just, ‘That was like candy floss, and now it’s nothing.'”
“Their natural instincts are impeccable.”
The trio of Ruffalo/Hemsworth/Berry is a dream come true for any director to be able to work with, and Layton agreed.
“Not only are they amongst the best actors working, genuinely I think Halle [Berry] and Mark [Ruffalo] are among the best of their generation,” he said. “So, for that it makes my job as a director easy because you’ve got racehorses. And then it’s just a question of keeping them on the right track and making sure if they’re veering off that we’re guiding them back. But otherwise, their natural instincts are impeccable.”
On Hemsworth, and audiences getting to see a different side of his talenr:
“Chris, I hadn’t seen do anything like what I wanted him to do. But I’d seen him do work that I knew was a lot more difficult than it looked, and I think people maybe think that the stuff he does with Thor is easy because he’s a big strapping guy. It’s really not. So I knew that he had these layers that no one had ever pulled from him and on the set he was incredible. He went toe-to-toe with Ruffalo, and both of them are kind of incredible. I think people might be kind of surprised by just how brilliant [Hemsworth] is as a performer.”
Crime 101 is in theaters now.
(Featured image: JB Lacroix/WireImage)
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