American Animals

Maybe you're like me and occasionally be in a bank or some other place with valuable things and take a look around and wonder how, if you were to rob it, what would your plan be? I, of course, would never do it, because I would never, ever want to go to jail, but in the 2018 film American Animals, some college students decide to give it a go.

Set in Lexington, Kentucky, this true story involves a young man who attends Transylvania College (the coolest name of a school in the U.S., if you ask me). Their special collections room in the library contains some very valuable manuscripts, the cornerstone being a first edition of Audubon's Birds of America, valued at twelve million dollars. The young man (played by Barry Keoghan) sees that it is very lightly guarded, and shares this information with his best friend, a loose cannon (Evan Peters).

Using Internet articles and old heist movies as their guide, they plan to steal the books. They end up recruiting two others. Though the audience can see how stupid this is, they want to escape their humdrum existence, and as Peters said, have a life like the ending of The Shawshank Redemption. Keoghan rightly tells him that only happens in the movies.

Written and directed by Bart Layton, American Animals is an examination of quietly desperate youth, who want to have adventures and a great life but have no idea how to do it. This might have made a crisp little crime drama--the robbery itself is masterfully suspenseful--but Layton decides to elevate it to being some kind of metaphor for the eternal chasing of the American dream. A painting of a flamingo in the book is a frequent image--Keoghan even imagines he sees one on a road late at night. I can only suppose that a flamingo represents the exotic, the coastal paradise that the boys long for.

American Animals also makes another mistake that I see all of the time--it references movies that are better than it. Reservoir Dogs gets a lot of mentions (Peters decides to give them names that are colors, including calling the macho driver the moniker of "Mr. Pink") and there's even a clip of Stanley Kubrick's The Killing. When I see or hear these references, it makes me realize I'd rather be watching those films.

I think Layton has a future as a director, but could probably use a stronger editor (the film is just under two hours but feels like it's half again as long) and can save the messages. If you want to send a message, we all know, call Western Union.