American Animals (2018)
Directed by Bart Layton
Lexington, Kentucky, 2004. Four young men attempt to execute one of the most audacious art heists in the history of the United States.
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They have a heist movie marathon and Google ‘how to plan a heist,’ and script out the perfect plan — complete with Reservoir Dogs code names, old man disguises, an Elvis montage, and a getaway van.
They take on “color” names, just as in Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs.”
Wisecracking post-Tarantino ironic meta-fiction for a decade past “Reservoir Dogs” marked a decadent phase for American crime pictures, but now movies like Bart Layton’s exemplary heist canvas, “American Animals,” bloom from that wreckage.
They watched heist movies like “Reservoir Dogs,” “The Killing,” “Ocean’s Eleven” and “Snatch,” of course.
The four plan the robbery by Googling “how to plan a heist” and by watching all the relevant movies they can get their hands on (especially Reservoir Dogs, which gives them the idea to use color-coded pseudonyms).
Their speech is littered with quotes from films like Jaws and The Matrix, and their plan takes way more than it needs to from Reservoir Dogs.
Layton zips through the obligatory preliminaries — getting a laugh out of the “scale model” cliche, letting us see the various holes in their “fool-proof plan,” as in, a plan conceived by fools who rent “Heist” and “The Thomas Crown Affair,” who watch Sterling Hayden tough-talk the gang through “the plan” in the Kubrick classic, “The Killing,” by way of preparation.
The decision to commit a robbery that will bring them fabulous wealth is based on watching too many movies like Oceans 11. (Layton was unable to get permission to use a clip from that film for a scene in which the boys watch movies for advice on how to plan a robbery; instead, he used a clip from Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing.)
Layton makes many references to a slew of crime films, with very explicit and overt nods to “Ocean’s 11,” “The Killing” and especially “Reservoir Dogs.”
Their preparations mostly consist of getting high and watching heist movies, like The Killing , and there’s a sense that if they paid closer attention to Stanley Kubrick’s film then they’d realize that these things rarely go according to plan.
They’ve already found an Amsterdam accomplice (Udo Kier, of all people) to fence the books and plenty of how-to inspiration by renting classic heist films (The Asphalt Jungle, The Killing, Rififi, Ocean’s Eleven, The Italian Job) from the local Blockbuster.
“Unlike the calm, cool, sophistication of the Ocean’s Eleven crew, this crime is real…”
They watched heist movies like “Reservoir Dogs,” “The Killing,” “Ocean’s Eleven” and “Snatch,” of course.
Nor does American Animals do more than note in passing that these guys used films like Reservoir Dogs and Ocean’s Eleven as models when planning their own caper.
At first the film has an Ocean's Eleven vibe where the characters and crime are celebrated.
At first, this technique — sort of a cross between “Ocean’s Eleven” and “Dateline” — pulls the viewer out of the story.
The film capably guides the viewers through the fun, Ocean’s Eleven-esque planning stages (the boys literally watch a stack of heist movie DVDs for inspiration), but it doesn’t remain so lighthearted.
Resolved to tackle any possible contingency, they bone up on old crime movies, their reference points and educational tools, all the while failing to notice that many of these flicks show grandiose criminal schemes self-destructing—e.g., Fight Club and Reservoir Dogs.
A potential Point Break or Fight Club of its generation, it arrives in a different commercial landscape; it’s a game-changing film which demands the same in support to make the impact it deserves.
Much like the members of "Fight Club" in David Fincher's subversive classic, these four have no direction.
Had any of them taken the time to revisit “Fight Club” (because there’s no way these kids haven’t seen “Fight Club”), perhaps they wouldn’t have needed to throw their lives away in order to make peace with the notion that they’re not as special as their mothers led them to believe.
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He shows them watching films both on-the-nose (1968’s The Thomas Crown Affair) and of dubious utility; Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which really only helps if you’ve robbed a train and have to get away from a super-posse on horseback.
But American Animals’ closest ancestors are found among the films of Richard Linklater and Robert Greene, specifically the former’s Bernie and the latter’s Kate Plays Christine.
A quote by Charles Darwin discussing how “American animals” often retreat into the caves of Kentucky is apropos for a movie that combines the hillbilly heist-esque drama that Steven Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky aimed for with a narrative examining the heights of male exceptionalism.