American Animals (2018)
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American Animals Movie Review
American Animals is a 2018 crime heist film directed by Bart Layton and starring Blake Jenner and Evan Peters among others. It’s a surprisingly strong genre flick.
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“You’re taught your entire life that what you do matters and that you’re special.
And that, there are things you can point towards that would…
which’ll show that you’re special, that show you’re different, when,
in all reality, those things… don’t matter. And you’re not special“
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I was really surprised by this movie as it’s so good and so authentic in a way. It follows a library heist carried out by a group of unfulfilled students and the eventual consequences and guilt they face. This is a real-life story and the movie is somewhat special for being directed by Bart Layton who is a documentarian first. And I really loved the interviews of the real people and how well they are interspersed with the story and the actors. They give this movie emotional levity and a wonderful documentary-like approach and momentum.
The movie is problematic in its first act. The second two are so good, but the first one is definitely way too slow and it simply failed to engage me properly. And the overall emphasis on regular heist tropes really hurt an otherwise original film. But it all gets better later on and it becomes terrific in that very involving, sophisticated third act. The movie is emotionally and thematically rather intelligent which I appreciated as that rarely is the case with this genre.
The characters could have been better. They are fine, but not particularly well developed individually. I actually found Blake Jenner’s performance to be the best of the bunch, but everyone did a good job acting-wise and they are all very dynamic and realistic as a team. The conflicts they had are so well executed.
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American Animals is stupendously directed by Bart Layton who is the one most responsible for the effectiveness of the entire film and storytelling. The pacing is problematic as I have said before, but the editing is mostly deft and the film is very well shot and the real crime execution paid off tremendously to create an impressively immediate, grounded in reality flick which gets progressively thrilling in the second half. The dialogue is also tremendous, as evidenced by some terrific conversation between the guys.
Although it takes its time to get there owing to a slow start, American Animals still ended up as one of the most interesting and different crime flicks in recent years. Its documentarian, more emotional and sophisticated approach really paid off, the performances are strong across the board and the third act is thrilling, riveting and superbly executed on all fronts.
