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Sundance London: ‘American Animals’ Review: Dir. Bart Layton (2018)

American Animals review: Bart Layton’s latest gets a UK debut as the surprise film at the 2018 Sundance London film festival.

American Animals review by Scott Davis.

American Animals review

American Animals review

Who doesn’t love a good heist movie? One of the more successful and indeed thrilling sub-genres of cinema, there’s an immediate allure to them in that somewhere in the dark recesses of our minds, we wonder whether we could have the foresight and intelligence to pull it off as convincingly as those on-screen. The answer is probably firmly in the negative category but the thrill and excitement that comes with such things is what keeps us coming back to the cinema equivalent. In writer/director Bart Layton’s first semi-narrative feature, he takes us into such a world where a group of young men believed that they have the necessary skills over a decade ago but found real-life much more unforgiving.

Set in a suburb of Kentucky, American Animals recounts the story of an library heist gone wrong (it’s much more exciting than it sounds) and the subsequent lives of the four men involved in the years following. In 2003, Spencer Weinherd (Barry Keoghan), Warren Lipka (Evan Peters), Chas Allen (Blake Jenner) and Eric Borsuk (Jared Abrahamson) are all looking for something more from their lives despite each having much talent in the world of sport and art. Chasing their own dreams of a “quick score”, they concoct a plan to steal a collection of rare and hugely valuable art books from the special collections range at the local Transylvania University. Supremely confident that such a ambitious heist would be a doddle in such remote surroundings, they set about their plan ready to reap the rewards of what a cool couple of million dollars will do for their meager existence. But such things aren’t as easy as in the movies and soon the pressure and consequences of their actions come into sharp view.

American Animals review

American Animals review

Anyone who saw Layton’s last film, 2012’s fascinating and crazy documentary The Imposter, will know what a talented filmmaker we have on our hands and with Animals he is able to fuse real-life stories with the film version of events with supreme class fuelled by his precise and slick direction. Part talking-heads, part action movie, there’s a unique thrust to proceedings that puts it in a league of its own – sure, it borrows little notes and melodies from everything from Heat, The Town and even The Dark Knight’s magnificent opening prologue, but its set-pieces have a propulsive nature that makes them riveting throughout.

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What lets the film down, however, is those moments in between all of those more enigmatic ones that go a long way to giving large portions of the film a stop-start motion to them. Both the real-life quartet and their cinema-screen versions are compelling enough throughout but the film never truly gets under their skin to discover how they tick and why they believed better than everyone else that such a risky venture was not outside the realms of possibility. Messers Peters, Keoghan, Jenner and Abrahamson give solid enough performances but there’s still an emptiness that fills your mind as the end credits roll that leaves a slightly disappointing taste in the mouth.

If it all sounds like a bit of a mixed bag it’s because in truth that’s the best way to describe American Animals: all of the elements are in place here but they just don’t coalesce in quite the way you would have hoped. That said, Layton shows himself to be a smart, visually-engrossing director and coupled with some solid performances from his group of leads, there is still plenty on offer here for a fun night at the multiplex.

American Animals review by Scott Davis, June 2018.

American Animals was reviewed at the 2018 Sundance London film festival. It will be released in UK cinemas on 7th September 2018.

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