By Emilio Frenk.
Director: Bart Layton
Cast: Barry Keoghan, Evan Peters, Blake Jenner, Jared Abrahamson, Ann Down, Gary Basaraba, Wayne Duvall, Whitney Goin, Jane McNeill and Udo Kier.
Rating: Excellent.
Bart Layton, director of 2012´s documentary “The Imposter” brings “American Animals”, his first fiction film and it was a hell of a ride.
Based on true events the film centers on Spencer Reinhard (Barry Keoghan) an aspiring young artist that has recently been accepted into Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky.
He has a close friendship with Warren Lipka (Evan Peters) a teenager that constantly gets him in trouble.
Everything will change for Spencer in a tour of the University´s library where he goes to the special collection and see´s some Audobon Prints and rare books, one of the them “The Origin of the Species” by Charles Darwin.
Spencer shares this with Warren and both of them are decided to rob both the Prints and books. They will recruit Eric Borsuk (Jared Abrahamson), who currently studies accounting and Chas Allen (Blake Jenner).
The four of them will pull a heist that is considered one of the most audacious in American History.
The element that made “American Animals” work is that it´s not your average heist movie. It´s a movie that combines both elements of documentary, with drama and comedy, which makes it special.
Bart Layton, who comes from Documentary background used the real robbers from the heist and he combined this with the cast who perform the robbery. I can´t recall if this technique has been used before but here was very effective.
Layton also wrote the screenplay with a lot of detail and the amount of research was notable. The characters he created here were very unique, despite of being amateurs on how they act before and after the heist. I like how Layton triggered the struggle of the four characters and that all of them are desperately seeking some attention to be special but of course it was not in the right way.
The film does remind me of “Reservoir Dogs” by Quentin Tarantino and is the biggest influence in this movie. I observed other movies like “Ocean´s Eleven” as an influence, by moments “Confidence” and Guy Ritchie`s “Snatch” since the pacing of those films and this one are very similar. Another reference of course is Sofia Coppola´s “The Bling Ring” since young adults do something very selfish that would mark the rest of the lives.
The film has a lot of dark humor and it does work since for a film like this you need to have some of it, otherwise it would have become too serious.
Not only Bart Layton focused very good in terms of camera, but he directed an outstanding cast who gave memorable performances.
Ole Bratt Birkeland´s work as a cinematographer was very good. In every single one of the characters used a different tone and lighting. Every framing has a meaning and you can tell that it relates with the personality of each and single one of the characters here.
Barry Keoghan´s performance here was really good and this young actor has a bright future. He was terrifying in last year`s “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” and here again he did a remarkable job, so as Evan Peters, Blake Jenner and Jared Abrahamson.
The chemistry between the four characters does work despite that most of the first act is more Spencer and Warren. The way how they plan the robbery was very well shot, edited and those were the brands of this film here.
When I first saw “American Animals” I didn´t know what to expect to be completely honest and this was one of the reasons why I enjoyed the film.
I am very happy that films like this are being showed and hopefully we can see more of this often.
“American Animals” is one of the best year´s films, I highly recommend it for Bart Layton´s directing, performances and visuals of this film.