American Animals movie review (2018) | Roger Ebert
The criminals in question are Warren Lipka, Spencer Reinhard, Chas Allen and Eric Borsuk (played in the dramatic scenes respectively by Evan Peters, Barry Keoghan, Blake Jenner and Jared Abrahamson). Layton allows them to tell their story, and when one person contradicts another, he rewinds the film a la Michael Haneke’s “Funny Games” to make the corrections. The actors adjust accordingly while the film builds a flimsy case for our sympathy. Warren’s folks are going through a divorce; Spencer is humiliated by having to do something homoerotic in order to pledge his fraternity. These two lifelong buddies are the main planners of the book heist, though in the real-life segments the two dispute who was the ringleader. But the superb Peters is so overwhelming a presence that Warren’s complete control in never in doubt. As the plan gets more complicated, Chas and Eric become involved.
It’s odd that the real-life quartet never appears together in a single frame of “American Animals,” because this is clearly their redemption tour. How you feel about this film hinges solely on whether you think this redemption is warranted. I did not, so the only message I received from “American Animals” is that you can star in your own movie if you commit a violent robbery and are from “America’s Heartland.” Hell, you don’t even have to succeed at the crime!
The first ideas for this robbery come when Keoghan’s version of Spencer visits the Transylvania University library’s secured reading room. Anyone who makes an appointment can gaze and marvel at the numerous rare books contained within, books like Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” and the library’s gigantic piece-de-resistance, several volumes of John James Audubon’s Birds of America. These priceless rarities are guarded by one person, librarian Betty Jane Gooch (Ann Dowd), who holds the keys to the display cases and drawers containing them. Audobon’s book, which Gooch tells Spencer is worth around $12 million, is the room’s centerpiece. It’s a gorgeously rendered piece of art showcased under the type of glass housing you’d see in a heist movie. Spencer thinks that if he watches enough videos of cinematic capers, he can pull off robbing Audobon’s book.
Speaking of heist movies, “American Animals” is packaged as genre kin to films like “Oceans 11” and “Rififi.” But what makes a heist movie fun is that its robbers are punching up, not down. There’s a Robin Hood mentality to most of them, with the mark being someone or something that either deserves it or can afford to do without whatever’s stolen. If that’s not the order of the day, these films at least give viewers anti-heroes who are doing the crime out of an understandable desperation. Even “Bonnie and Clyde,” despite all its murdered innocents, had as its central robbery target what was considered to be an enemy of the people.
