Bart Layton’s “Crime 101” is much more than your average heist thriller.
Chris Hemsworth plays Davis, a jewel thief who specializes in meticulously targeted robberies. He commits those heists along the 101 freeway in Los Angeles and doesn’t harm anyone. Mark Ruffalo plays the smart LAPD detective Lou Lubesnick, who is onto this pattern. And Halle Berry plays Sharon, an insurance broker who still aspires to be a partner, but it’s an old boys club, and she realizes that’s not going to happen anytime soon. Before long, she finds herself caught up with both Davis and Lou.
When adapting Don Winslow’s novella “Savages,” Layton knew he wanted to make the film more than a popcorn heist movie. Speaking with Variety, he said “There’s a framework with which I can start to explore issues of class and, you know, wealth inequality and status anxiety and some of those things which you know, are to do with, not limited to L.A., but L.A. is a very particular place which does create quite a good deal of pressure to have status and wealth and all of that stuff.”
Layton shot in Los Angeles, but he wanted to find parts of the city that hadn’t necessarily been seen before on film. “I wanted to reflect all of the social strata. There is a topographical divide. The wealthiest people live high on the hills or the coast and the people without anything live underneath or even under the freeway or, you know, so all of that was important to try to convey.”
Layton shows how a diamond starts its journey in Downtown L.A. in the immigrant-run jewelry stores. “By the time it travels to the very, very high end jeweler in Calabasas, that diamond has quadrupled or has multiplied In value by tens of times,” he says.
Berry adds, “Bart put together a movie that really is a love letter to the city. You know, he showed it for all of its beauty and, unfortunately, for all of the underbelly of it, and all of the sort of devastation that the city has seen as well. You get to see all the migrant workers, you get to see who has built the city, right, and why it has become such a great city. And you know, that just made me feel really good and proud of this place that I’ve been living in for so long.”
Hemsworth says that by showing the polarity of the glitz and glam contrasted against the homelessness is “what makes the movie have authenticity.” The city itself becomes a character imbued within these characters that have their own complexities and emotional depth. He adds, “We don’t tend to see it shot this way anymore. We don’t tend to see it on film so much.”
Ruffalo recalls when he first started out, “I lived in the hardest parts of Los Angeles, and I [later] got to live in the nice parts.” With the film shooting from Echo Park to Venice and Santa Monica, he says. “Those places all have their own feeling and look. They all have their own styles. ‘Collateral’ did that, maybe ‘To Live and Die in L.A.’ did that. But there’s not a lot of movies that do it as well as this does.”
The film also shot in Melrose Place, Calabasas and the Regency Beverly Wilshire, but here production designer Scott Dougan explains how some of the other key locations came to appear in the film.
Lia’s Tacos stand – Echo Park Ave. and Sunset Blvd
Monica Barbaro at Lia’s Tacos in “Crime 101.”
Courtesy of Amazon Content Servi
Dougan explains they were scouting the stretch of Sunset Blvd from Alvarado Street to Dodger Stadium, where there are numerous taco stands, but they ended up getting tacos from Lia’s. “How do you choose a taco stand in Los Angeles? Right? I think you choose a taco stand that you go to a lot.”
The ‘Sculpting Another Destiny’ mural by Ricardo Mendoza in Echo Park
Anyone that has been to Echo Park and Dodger Stadium is likely to have seen Ricardo Mendoza’s colorful mural on the building at the corner of Echo Park Ave. and Sunset. “We ended up contacting Ricardo, and we paid them a licensing fee to showcase their work in the movie. What’s better than that? A famous Los Angeles mural at one of the best intersections in the city,” Dougan says.
Sixth Street Bridge
Courtesy of Amazon Content Servi
Dugan says the bridge opened in 2022 and immediately people were street racing on it. Under it, a public park was being built. “I haven’t been back since this past summer. It might be on its way, but they’re putting soccer fields there. The first time we went to scout there, there’s a biker club.”
As Layton and Duggan were driving around, there were looking for a place that was “iconically Los Angeles, but not necessarily someplace everybody’s been.”
“”It’s so beautiful and evocative in Los Angeles, and you see the city in the background, like, depending on which angle you’re at. So we were able to shoot driving past the river and seeing Los Angeles in the background.”
Dougan considers it one of the best views of Los Angeles. “From the east side, looking west. I always think of it as the profile of the city…when you’re looking at it because the whole of Downtown and Figueroa just stretches. It’s just architecturally beautiful too.”
Watch below to see how location manager Robert Foulkes describe how he and co-manager Doug Dresser selected the best L.A. locations for the film.
