American Animals: film review by Demetrios Matheou

Take the heist gone awry scenario of The Killing, add a dash of banter from Reservoir Dogs, some of the chutzpah of Ocean’s 11, give it a little Heat, and what do you have? A smart, suspenseful drama, whose young protagonists have watched too many crime movies, have a romanticised idea of themselves as art thieves, but like most of their film heroes come to learn that crime really doesn’t pay.

In 2012 the British writer/director Bart Layton made The Imposter, a documentary about a French conman who successfully persuaded a Texas family that he was their long-lost son. It seemed too preposterous to be true, and yet it was.

Layton’s skill in dealing with “stranger than fiction” stories puts him in good stead for his new film. This time, it’s not a documentary but a fictionalised version of a true story. That in itself is commonplace. But here Layton includes the real protagonists on screen, who recall their experiences in between scenes of actors dramatizing them.

The result is both a highly entertaining crime thriller and a thoughtful rumination on the consequences of crime. And despite its fun with movie references, it’s extremely original.

In 2003, in Lexington, Kentucky, four middle-class young men get together for a daring heist. Their target: $12million of rare books, including a copy of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, held in a special collections library of one of their colleges. Security is light, with only an elderly female librarian barring their way. Nevertheless, the robbery needs to be carefully planned.

This is not any sort of average gang: early twenties, with comfortable lives and non-existent rap sheets. The idea is hatched, almost accidentally, by conscientious art student Spencer (Barry Keoghan) and rebellious Warren (Evan Peters), who’s about to drop out of his sports scholarship. They then enlist intense accountancy student Eric (Jared Abrahamson) and well-off fitness fanatic Chas (Barry Jenner). About all these four have in common is that they’re outsiders, loners, looking for a break from what they regard as their mediocre lives.

Their adventure could have ended in the planning, which is largely shaped by Google and favourite crime films. Some of their notions, such as disguising themselves as old men, are engagingly inept. All but Warren seem to think they’ll never actually go through with it. Until they do.

From the outset, Layton plays post-modern games, interspersing the planning of the robbery with reflections from family and teachers who insist that the quartet were “pretty darn good kids” and unlikely robbers. Later, the real Spencer and co relate their versions of what happened, each subtly different to the others – which begs the question, could they really have trusted each other?

This is lithe, inventive storytelling, stylishly shot, with Layton modulating the tone from comic beginnings towards something dark and reflective as the crime finally unfolds. Of the cast, the standouts are young Irishman Barry Keoghan, whose earnest, introverted Spencer is lightyears away from his breakout performance last year as the psychotic stalker in The Killing of a Sacred Deer; Peters, whose energy drives the film; and Ann Dowd – Aunt Lydia in The Handmaid's Tale on television – who lends painful depth to the luckless librarian. Appropriately, the real foursome actually come across well themselves, with Warren Lipka having some kind of strange on-camera charisma.

Sometimes a film can be too clever or tricksy for its own good. But like one of the directors cited by the gang, Tarantino, Bart Layton not only avoids the pitfalls of over-egging, but makes a thriller that is more than the sum of its many parts.