Mark Reviews Movies: AMERICAN ANIMALS

Become a fan on Facebook Follow on Twitter

Review by Mark Dujsik | June 7, 2018

The opening text of American Animals announces that "This is not based on a true story," and then the phrase "not based on" disappears. The film does indeed tell a true story, about a heist at a university in Kentucky. If one does some basic research into the real-life incident, the headline of the university newspaper's coverage pretty much sums it up: "A brazen plot doomed to fail."

Listening to the actual robbers, who appear as themselves in the present day throughout this dramatized version of their story, one gets a sense that at least three of the four of them saw it as a goof. It was never really going to happen. They kept telling themselves that up until the point that two of them assaulted a woman and proceeded to steal books that were worth over $12 million.

Putting the real thieves on screen is a potential narrative coup for writer/director Bart Layton. Here, from their own mouths to our ears, is the validation of Layton's fictionalized account. Some things happened for certain. Others were either vaguely remembered or learned second-hand. The first act of the film takes advantage of the moments of confusion. The plan to rob the special collections room at the library of Transylvania University was formed either at a party or in a car. The two guys who first discussed the idea disagree about the location, and Layton jumps between the two spaces. The younger versions of the men go through the conversation without missing a beat—except when one of the young men tells the other to make a turn while they're standing on a porch.

The truth is hazy, especially more than a decade after the fact, and memories are unreliable. Can we believe what these men are saying? Layton wants us to doubt them in the particulars of what actually happened, but it's clear the filmmaker is convinced that they're sincere in the lessons they learned from the semi-successful and then thoroughly botched robbery.

The doubt is vital, because these are not sympathetic figures. To be fair, we can understand their general disillusionment with the world and their place within it. Who hasn't felt that way? At the film's start, Spencer Reinhard (Barry Keoghan) is a student at Transylvania University. He wants to become an artist, but he's already anticipating the day that his dreams escape him. Warren Lipka (Evan Peters) is on an athletic scholarship at the University of Kentucky, but he's uncertain why he ever started playing whatever sport it is that he plays. In his youth, he was and, at college, remains a troublemaker.

When Spencer hypothesizes about stealing a bunch of rare books from his university's library, Warren takes it seriously. Spencer thinks it's a fun fantasy to play out with his best friend—a way to take their minds off of the ruts of their respective lives. They rent a bunch of movies about bank robberies, search the internet for how to pull off the perfect heist, and put together a scheme. For his part, Warren tries to find a way to sell the book on the black market.

The back-and-forth between the dramatization and the real people continues when the duo recruits two more members: Eric Borsuk (Jared Abrahamson), the strategist, and Chas Allen (Blake Jenner), the man with the money to get the necessary tools. All of them, save for Warren, see it as a lark—an entertaining way to pass the time or to deepen friendships that changed course with the arrival of college. Layton sees and mirrors the way in which the quartet seems to have taken in pop culture. Their initial plan for a heist plays out in a one-take, with the cool, stylish demeanor of a Hollywood movie (only for Eric to point out that it wouldn't work). Warren assigns his cohorts codenames, a la Eric's least-favorite Quentin Tarantino film.

In other words, the guys have either intentionally or subconsciously erected a barrier between fantasy and reality. It's all a game to them—playacting as robbers in the underdog story of their lives (They even play dress-up during the first attempt, disguising themselves in old-age makeup in order to remain unnoticed and overlooked). The matter of incapacitating the librarian in charge of the collection is the only thing that gives them pause, which, in theory and like everything else about the plan, shouldn't be an issue if it is, as their present-day selves constantly say, just a hypothetical scenario.

It's complicated, and it's unfortunate that Layton doesn't take full advantage of the obvious contradictions within the stories of these men. The documentary-like device of interviews with the real-life subjects dissipates as the robbery moves forward, but in its place, there's a genuine sense of reckoning when the reality of perpetrating the heist comes crashing down on them.

Key to that is the start of the robbery, which involves keeping the librarian from interfering. It's easy to say that we've become desensitized to violence in the movies, but here, we have a scene of relatively minor violence (in the big picture of the medium) that's genuinely horrifying. A lot of that can be attributed to Ann Dowd, playing the librarian with an all-too-real sense of the shock, humiliation, and terror of the thieves' plan put into motion.

What we have here, then, is an entertaining mishmash of fiction and reality, which understands but doesn't quite make a salient point about how the line between the two can be blurred. American Animals hints at the idea that these men are still creating a fiction about what happened. Layton doesn't take them to task for that, but at least he got a good story out of it.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products

Buy the Soundtrack (Digital Download)

Buy the DVD

Buy the Blu-ray