Review - American Animals

This week was originally going to be The Miseducation of Cameron Post because I saw a preview screening where the director turned up for a Q and A and I'm planning a blog post about stuff from that at some point but between when I saw that and when this post comes out, I saw American Animals and damn do I want to talk about it. It's a film based on real life events where four college students plan and carry out an audacious robbery of their library, home to multiple rare and highly expensive books. None of them are criminals or have experience at pulling off heists but they do have a love of heist movies. Through dramatic re-enactments and talking heads with the real people, Bart Layton lays out this tale in an enticing and entrancing manner which I'll go into in a moment because while this is usually the bit where I talk about story, there's so much about the structure and format of this film that I want to talk about that a fraction of a paragraph wouldn't cut it.

With a cast like this, performances are wonderful to talk about. It's pretty much down to two central roles that makes the film pop but I'll talk about the great supporting cast first. Blake Jenner and Jared Abrahmson play the two friends who are brought on later in the film to help in the heist and both are great. I'd heard of neither of them before but they did a real solid job here and if I see them in films again, I'll fondly think of them as "oh yeah, he was in American Animals, wasn't he?". There's also another great performance from Ann Dowd as the librarian. It's funny because I've realised that between The Leftovers, The Handmaid's Tale and Hereditary, I haven't seen her in any sympathetic roles but considering the power she brings to those other roles, it shouldn't be surprising that she's so sympathetic here when she's usually so despicable. Two men rise to the top though and they are Evan Peters and Barry Keoghan. Keoghan I've been championing for a little while now, especially after his chilling performance in The Killing of a Sacred Deer and he's damn charming and convincing here, even if he doesn't quite hit the heights of Deer. Of the two of them though, Peters was the one who charmed me most, despite the fact I only know him from the recent X-Men films. In the way the film tells the story, he is shown as the ringleader and you can believe it, a confidence man personified in every sense.

As I was preparing for this review, the phrase "cineliteracy" was going around my head a lot, but I realised I'd used that quite a lot in a review in the last year. It took me a little while to remember which review it was (even I am only so dedicated to my blog of course) but eventually, it came to me; Baby Driver. For those who don't remember, I adored it and for a little while, it was my favourite film of last year and a lot of the reasons I loved that are the reasons I love American Animals. This film isn't just a heist film, it's one with an explicit knowledge of the fact it's a heist film. Characters watch heist films for ideas, they plan out their perfect executions of the heist and know that it'll all be fine, that no one will be hurt. Adding to this explicit reference to cinema is the fact that interviews with the real people are utilised throughout, often throwing into question which characters we can trust, whether the truth is a real thing that we can aim to find through cinema. Also like Baby Driver, the editing has this beautiful kinetic energy that propels the film forward like a bullet from a gun. Every cut or lack of a cut has a purpose and just gelled with me, keeping the good times going when they were good or the bad times hitting while it's bad. Bart Layton's documentary The Imposter was more thrilling than many fiction films and he carries that promise across with ease.

It's hard to tell if everyone is going to love this film nearly as much as I do because I think it's just wonderful. It's the ultimate post-modern heist film, one which is constantly self-reflexive, twisting around to examine and re-evaluate itself and its characters but if that sounds too complicated, it's also a damn fun heist movie that is as willing to question the very nature of truth as it is to thrill you. If all this hasn't convinced you, just look for the excellent trailer online, it's one of the best I've seen in years. American Animals is just a damn joy to behold and I am very happy to bestow upon it a