American Animals

This is in some ways a fairly familiar heist story, with a couple of interesting details. First of all, the two lead actors, Barry Keoghan and Evan Peters, are distinctly unusual young actors who pair interestingly - KEoghan's slightly nerdy attitude and Peters' youthful fearlessness play well against each other in the early stages. Also there's a clever framing device as this based-on-a-true-story brings in interviews with the real participants, including ones that indicate that the participants don't always agree on the details (which then gets introduced into the re-enactments, as, for example, a disagreement about the location of a conversation means that the re-enactment swaps location from shot-to-shot). But these embelishments tend to drip away as the film continues (yes, we still get the interviews, but they stop interacting with how the main story goes, and KEoghan in particular tends to get sidelined when the heist actually takes place). And the payoff just isn't quite worth the setup - it's ultimately a very conventional heist in most respects, and while there's notes of concern for the victims, it's not enough to elevate this beyond the middling.