Over 30 years ago, Michael Mann’s Heat stunned the world with its grey morality and glaring similarities between Al Pacino’s cop and Robert De Niro’s criminal.

Now writer-director Bart Layton has made a spiritual successor crime thriller for the 21st century and it’s one of the best movies of 2026 so far.

Boasting an impressive cast of Marvel stars, Chris Hemsworth plays jewel thief Mike Davis, who works his way through Los Angeles jobs while being hunted by Mark Ruffalo’s detective Lou Lubesnick.

Meanwhile, Halle Berry’s insurance broker Sharon Colvin gets entangled with the crook’s next score as Barry Keoghan’s biker criminal Ormon brings chaos into the mix. 

Based on Don Winslow’s 2020 novella of the same name, Crime 101 is full of thrilling action sequences from blood-pumping jewel heists and gun stand-offs to car-smashing chases through LA.

What makes Crime 101 so good is that the heart-racing thrills are complemented by a great script full of morally complex characters. It’s so refreshing to see Thor star Hemsworth in a proper dramatic role as a sensitive, introverted thief who would never actually hurt anyone and tries to date on the side in a desperate attempt at some normality. On the flip side is the violent and unpredictable mugger played by Keoghan, the master of manic villains, who has a vulnerable boy hiding underneath his dangerous bravado.

Meanwhile, Ruffalo’s tubby smoker cop tries to do the right thing but constantly finds himself compromised. Similarly, Berry’s Sharon has played her life by the book but has not benefited from it. As a result, the film asks whether the “real” crooks aren’t necessarily breaking the law but are just playing the unfair game of life, while getting actual justice sometimes means good people being reduced to committing crime. A fantastic new crime thriller on many levels that deserves to be seen on the big screen.

Crime 101 hits UK cinemas on Friday.