American Animals

American Animals

At the start of “American Animals,” the onscreen title declares, “This is not based on a true story. This is a true story.” It’s also an imitation of “I, Tonya,” except that instead of having actors play people who appear in documentary-like segments sprinkled throughout the film, it interviews those people now years older as they reflect on and justify what they did.

That might be cutesy in another director’s hands; here it feels more like Clint Eastwood’s “The 15:17 to Paris” crossed with a low-rent “Bonnie and Clyde.” The men at least played themselves in the re-enactment there and are heroes to boot. Here we have four smirking, privileged young men from Lexington, Ky., who decided to beat up an elderly librarian because they were bored with their lives before attempting to steal a book worth $12 million that was too big for them to carry. And we’re supposed to feel sorry for them?

The criminals are Warren Lipka (Evan Peters), Spencer Reinhard (Barry Keoghan), Chas Allen (Blake Jenner) and Eric Borsuk (Jared Abrahamson). They each tell the story; when one person contradicts another, writer-director Bart Layton rewinds the film a la Michael Haneke’s “Funny Games” to make sure we get the truth correct. The actors adjust accordingly while the movie makes its case for our sympathy less convincingly than any defense attorney I can remember seeing recently.

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 do most of the planning for the book heist, though in their segments together they dispute who was really behind it all. But Peters is so much better than Abrahamson that Warren’s complete control over everything is never in doubt. As the plan gets more complicated, Chas and Eric get involved.

It’s strange that the four real-life guys are never seen in the same frame of “American Animals,” because this is clearly their redemption tour. Whether you think they deserved one will color your response to this movie. I did not, so all I got out of “American Animals” was that you can star in your own motion picture if you commit a violent robbery and hail from “America’s Heartland.” Hell, you don’t even have to succeed at it!

Keoghan’s version of Spencer first gets the notion when he visits the Transylvania University library’s secured reading room. Anybody who makes an appointment can sit and gawk at all its rare books Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” among them but most notably several volumes of John James Audubon’s Birds of America, which is where Gooch comes in.

These priceless rarities are guarded by one person: librarian Betty Jean Gooch (Ann Dowd), who has keys to both display cases and drawers full of them. The centerpiece is Audobon, which she tells Spencer is worth about $12 million. It’s a beautifully illustrated book displayed under museum-quality glass housing like something out of an art-heist movie; duly inspired, Spencer figures if he watches enough clips from capers on YouTube he’ll be able to pull off robbing it.

When talking about heist films, “American Animals” is marketed as genre kin to movies like “Oceans 11” and “Rififi.” But what’s fun about a heist movie is that the robbers are punching up, not down. Most of them have a Robin Hood mentality, with the mark being someone or something that either deserves it or can afford to do without whatever’s stolen. If these movies don’t go by that order, then they at least offer anti-heroes who are doing the crime out of an understandable desperation. Even “Bonnie and Clyde,” for all its murdered innocents, had what was considered to be an enemy of the people as its central robbery target.

Would you enjoy a movie where Warren Buffet robs a bodega and kicks the bodega cat for good measure? Because that’s what “American Animals” feels like. Granted, Warren and his droogs are technically robbing a university, but we never hear them talk about that entity. Most of their planning deals with how to in their words “neutralize the librarian.”

There are repeated arguments about this, with no one willing to get their hands dirty until Warren begrudgingly volunteers. Layton even gives us an imaginary re-enactment staged like a delicate dance number, with Dowd getting tazed in the neck and then flung out of frame while the guys run away with the loot. Of course it won’t be that easy, and the one guy who complains most vociferously about not wanting anything to do with harming Ms. Gooch will be the one to get his hands dirtiest.

There are several false starts for the heist; ample opportunity for these grown men to change their minds. But whenever someone balks, someone else will incredulously say “don’t you want to know what happens next?! You’ll regret this for the rest of your life if you don’t do it!” Between these scenes is a digression to Holland, the only enjoyable moment in the film, where Peters interacts with a shady fence played by the legendary Udo Kier. Kier is so intriguing in his brief appearance that I wanted to run off with him to whatever heist he might be doing.

Alas, the library robbery is the hand that I’d been dealt, and its execution is when “American Animals” becomes irredeemable. The scene is ugly and violent; Dowd thrashing about after she’s been tazed and Peters alternately screaming at her to shut up/trying to comfort her as she’s ziptied/gagged/thrown around by his accomplice. Layton makes sure to give us a shot of Dowd wetting herself in fear, which is nowhere near as repugnant as what he does next: he cuts to the real perpetrators, all of whom look at the camera in what I assume is supposed to be remorse. Even in her moment of violation Betty Jane Gooch isn’t given any agency.

The real Betty Jane Gooch, however, does get the last word in this movie, so I won’t give it zero stars. The film is much kinder to the men who assaulted her than she is. But it’s a little late for that. Where was her running commentary while she was being beaten?

When I looked up this story because I thought the movie was messing with me at first I came across a Vanity Fair article that referred to the men who did seven years as “good kids from good families.” Never mind that they weren’t kids and that “good families” implies they weren’t in situations where they had no choice but to turn to crime. But isn’t that always what the news media says when the criminals are white men?

“Good kids from good families” vs. “thugs who had histories” when the shoe is on the darker foot. Intentionally or not, “American Animals” plays into this often toxic narrative that grants benefit of doubt and paths to redemption no matter how vile your offense, provided you’re the right gender and color.

A caption at the end of the movie tells us one of these guys has ambitions to work in movies. Well, buddy: Here you are.

Watch American Animals For Free On Gomovies.