American Animals

This is not based on a true story.

This is                      a true story.

3 young men idle restlessly in a library. A 4th sits behind the wheel of a car running outside. Old age makeup and fake beards hide their youthful faces. Furtive sweaty glances are thrown around the room. The tension is palpable. They are about to steal something very expensive. They are working off a half arsed plan. Their entire future is at stake.

Spencer Reinhard was a new art student at Transylvania University in Kentucky in 2003. During orientation he was given a tour of the campus and shown a collection of priceless books stored in the school's library. His lunatic best friend Warren Lipka decides that stealing these books will liven things up for himself and bring a bit of a spark back into the apathetic Spencer's life. 

Everyone has that one friend, the one who can talk you into doing anything, no matter who stupid it is or how dangerous. The person that adds the spice to a group. The one you want to live up to no matter how badly hurt you'll get. Warren Lipka was one such person and he's one of the main reasons why American Animals is so entertaining. A character you'll love to hate but one that will keep you glued to the screen. He's the polar opposite of Spencer. A young man on the verge of an existential crisis. The character that gives the films it's soul. This energy and sensitivity combined turns American Animals into a compelling morality tale, in places almost a comedy but still a film that will rattle you with its nail chewing tension and it's depressing take on the state of the psyches of today's youth. 

It sounds like a straightforward watch but it has enough uniqueness and quirks to make it stand out from the already crowded heist movie genre. The docudrama format helps. Slotted in throughout are asides from the real people involved, their recollections jarring with each other constantly and at times they even share the screen with their cinematic counterparts and argue about how things really went down. Hair, scarves, times, places, everything is confused and you aren't sure who or what to believe and in an era of #fakenews it makes a 15 year old story feel very topical indeed. Then when you add euro-horror maestro Udo Kier into the mix in a cameo as a Dutch fence or Donovan's truly unsettling classic 60's song 'Hurdygurdy man' things really start feeling nicely off-kilter.

Kids these days are told they are perfect, special, capable of anything. It's a positive, forward way to think but it has the downside of creating narcissists who can't cope when things don't go their way. They fall into a pit of ennui or become raging egotists and only something big is enough to move them. Cross that with a generation who've grown up compulsively consuming media and you get a group who think they've got what it takes to pull off what they've seen in the movies. An early scene sees our two leads binge watching heist films like Rififi, Thief, The Driver, The Thomas Crown Affair, Asphalt Jungle and Reservoir Dogs. Warren sees himself in the black and white world of Sterling Hayden's crime drama, quotes the Matrix and even uses the colour coded system of Dogs which inevitably leads to arguments over the use of Mr Pink cos young men and pink = lots of insecurity. Unlike Reservoir Dogs though here we actually see the heist take place and it's a masterpiece of nauseous tension and Murphy's Law.

Our own Barry Keoghan as Spencer is the heart of the movie and once again he shows he has the chops to do anything. He's not an Irish lad playing an American. He becomes American. The tortured teenage artist we've seen in a 1000 other American films. If you hadn't seen him before you'd never think he started off as the little bastard machine gunning cats in Love/Hate. Evan Peters as Warren is electric. Totally believable as the absolute bullshitter we've all experienced who has the gift to make people believe they are capable of anything. When he's onscreen you want to throttle him, but you also kind of want to hang out with him just to see what kind of fun he could make happen. Blake Jenner and  Jared Abrahamson play two fellow students roped into the robbery but appear too late in the film to make much of an impact. One's a shouter and one's a worrier, their character's aren't developed much beyond that and it's the film's one failing.

An unusual film but one really worth seeing. A story nearly too stupid to be true filled with details that sound made up (Transylvania University..seriously!) but one that proves the old maxim to be true once again: Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. It's also funnier and more disturbing.