American Animals

Director Bart Layton's first narrative feature is an outrageously entertaining, tremendously inventive true-crime dazzler, which strikes a miraculous balance between the documentary grit he's acclaimed for (ie The Imposter) and the classic comedy heist thriller. In 2004, four Kentucky college kids looking for excitement in their boring lives decided to rob their Transylvania University library of its collection of rare books, including a priceless Darwin volume. Their bizarre preparation for the daring theft? Watching Quentin Tarantino, Jules Dassin and Michael Mann movie masterpieces! What could possibly go wrong? And what on earth made them think they could get away with it? The cleverest move in this outstanding blurring of fact, fiction and celluloid dreaming has the conflicting accounts of the four amateur crooks blended with their real-life convicted adult counterparts, speaking in the present-day with sobering hindsight. A truly unique, constantly amusing and engrossing entry in the criminal caper Hall of Fame.