Chris Hemsworth’s Many Mann-ly Efforts

How CRIME 101 Learned From BLACKHAT’s Failure to Launch

The specter of Michael Mann looms over Crime 101 from first moment to last. While the new film, currently in theaters, began as a novella from (the great) Don Winslow, there’s no way to watch the moody L.A.-set thriller and not think back to the likes of Heat and Thief. With its focus on the minutiae of methodology, especially as relates to both crime and policework, its sprawling, digressive approach to narrative, and its ensemble of lonely souls seeking some measure of connection in an indifferent world, the only way Crime 101 could wear its influence on its sleeve even more would be for, oh, I don’t know, Chris Hemsworth’s master thief to go home to a spartan apartment and stare out at the ocean while contemplating his life of violence.

Oh, wait, he does do that, doesn’t he? Go figure.

Crime 101 is not the first thriller to wear its Michael Mann influence like a badge of honor, but it is the rare descendent with a leading man who already worked with the Mann himself. The whole time I was watching the new film, I couldn’t keep from thinking how odd it was that here was Hemsworth headlining this ersatz Mann exercise, having done the real deal over a decade ago with Blackhat.

What makes the comparison especially pointed is that while Crime 101 is enjoying a perfectly warm reception, Blackhat was an unambiguous disaster, a nuclear-strength boondoggle of a kind we just don’t see very often in the modern era of algorithmically-designed safe bets.

So let’s talk about it. Why did Hemsworth bomb out so hard the first time he tried his hand at playing a brooding criminal in a subdued thriller from Michael Mann, and did he fare any better a decade later when he gave it another go in a karaoke version of that oh so distinct aesthetic?

If you weren’t paying attention to online movie chatter in 2015/2016, it’s tough to convey just how much of a punchline Blackhat was before anyone had seen a minute of it. The notion of Thor Odinson playing a hacker was laughed out of the room, not helped by a trailer which featured an instantly meme’d line describing a, “black hat hacker named Hathaway”. (Like the infamous, “He was with my Mom studying spiders in the Amazon right before she died” bit from the Madame Web trailer, this line does not actually appear in the finished film).

Blackhat was alternately laughed at or ignored upon release, though the likes of Matt Zoller Seitz and Bilge Eibiri were early champions of it as a worthy entry in the Mann canon. Today, Blackhat enjoys a thriving cult following, boosted in part by a lauded director’s cut that irons out the film’s at times discombobulating narrative. But at the time it hit with a dismal thud, and it came just as Hemsworth was making an earnest go of parlaying his superhero success into boosting the vanishing landscape of mainstream, adult-aimed studio movies. 2015 would actually be bookended by high profile disappointments for Hemsworth, as In the Heart of the Sea also flopped the following Christmas.

Looking at the film over a decade later, Hemsworth’s dedication to the role is appreciable, admirable, and does not do anything to alleviate how fundamentally wrong he is for the part. And, look, leave the hacker thing out of it. Who the hell knows what a hacker even looks like anymore. The problem lay in the fact that Michael Mann assembled a protagonist from the pieces of his previous antiheroic leading men and then cast an actor who at that time did not have nearly the presence or gravity to pull it off.

(A black hat hacker named) Hathaway monologues to his love interest about the philosophy of self-improvement that got him through prison, just like James Caan’s character in Thief (who is a thief). He narrates antagonistic dialogue aimed at the phantom adversary that has become an obsession, just like William Petersen’s character in Manhunter (who is a manhunter). And his rigid professionalism that only starts to thaw under the influence of a woman’s attention recalls so many of Mann’s men, not least of them Robert de Niro’s character in Heat (who is hot).

But Caan and Peterson barely have to speak to sell the authenticity of their weary, obsessive characters. Even in stillness they project the lingering effect of the violence done onto them, the violence they have done unto others, and the violence that remains all too close to the surface of the storm-tossed interiors of their souls. When Caan rants about how he closed his heart to survive incarceration, when Petersen goes dead behind the eyes as he tries to enter the mind of a killer, you believe it. You believe them.

Hemsworth, bless him, you never believe. He’s too effortlessly perfect in his looks, too carefully studied in his performance. You don’t feel the character, you feel the actor trying his best to inhabit a character too far removed from his experiences and abilities. At times it feels like watching a talented high school student headlining his school’s performance of King Lear: The words are right, the ability is clear, but at the end of the day you’re looking at a kid with baby powder in his hair and wrinkles written in chalk.

In Hemsworth’s defense, he seems to relax into the role as the film progresses, and by the time the third act of the film narrows its focus down to him and love interest Chen Lien (Tang Wei) on a mission of revenge, he has settled in nicely. The less stilted Mann dialogue he has to spit out, the more he’s allowed to play an earnest romantic lead, the better Hemsworth fares.

All of which brings us to Crime 101, where once again Chris Hemsworth is playing a polished career criminal entrenched within highly organized systems and processes who only thaws under the influence of a woman’s attention.

But right from the jump, Hemsworth immediately feels more at home in this material than he did a decade ago. Part of that is simply time. Real wrinkles now line his eyes and there’s a weariness in his posture and motions that can’t be faked. And while he remains an impossibly handsome and statuesque man (a fact that Blackhat stubbornly refuses to acknowledge but that Crime 101 has to pause and address), his proportions are far more human here than the sculpted figure he boasts whilst caped.

The most important distinction, though, is in how this career criminal is conceived. Michael Mann’s protagonists are cold as ice professionals who never let you see the stress fractures piling up. But in Crime 101, Hemsworth’s Mike might be competent as can be, but he’s also a terrified mess during each and every job. He trembles, shakes, and Hemsworth’s eyes dart with barely restrained panic any time he’s forced into action. While he can play-act as a cool customer when trying to set up a job, when actually in action or when faced with off-the-clock human interaction, he’s a twitchy, mumbling disaster. Rather than being masked behind elegant men’s wear and snappy dialogue, Hemsworth’s vulnerability is right at the very surface of the performance.

When Blackhat hit (or failed to hit, as the case may be), Chris Hemsworth was still trying to figure out who “Chris Hemsworth” was as a movie star when away from magic hammers. In Blackhat, you can sense an actor contorting themselves to fit into an existing mold of the hyper-competent, unflappable badass, one whose camera-ready slicked back hair never falls out of place, who can crack a digital code and then snap a goon’s neck in the same breath.

What’s become clear in the time since is that for as literally-godly as Hemsworth presents, he’s at his best when playing men who aspire to that level of swagger but fall brutally short. He never busted any of those ghosts. His Extraction character is a walking wound who can barely cover for how low his shortcomings have left him. And his career-best performance in Furiosa is as a man who desperately wishes to be a larger-than-life warlord of the wasteland ala the Lord Humungous or Immortan Joe, but who ultimately proves to be a pathetic wannabe.

Even Thor, Hemsworth’s signature character, was only really unlocked once the movies began embracing that Odinson was a fail-son, undercut at every turn and dogged by loss.

Hell, even in his recent (quite good) vocal performance for Transformers One, Hemsworth is in earnest loser mode. It’s almost a relief that that film won’t get a sequel that would force him to try and keep a commanding version of Optimus Pride compelling for the whole runtime.

It’s a paradox: Chris Hemsworth failed at playing a Michael Mann leading man but then embraced failing and so now he’s succeeding at failing to play a kind of Michael Mann leading man which is successful. I think.

Ultimately Crime 101 is an entertaining exercise that can never outrun its influences enough to really establish its own compelling identity. But it is a revelatory showing by Hemsworth, and suggests that if he’s finally ready to set aside his Asgardian safety net, there’s a world of strong dramatic roles waiting for him.

He just has to keep failing at succeeding. Succeeding at failing? I don’t know, one of those. Probably.