Amid the cornucopia of summer blockbusters this month ("Ocean's 8," Incredibles 2," Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom"), along came a phenomenal little film called "American Animals." The title is unappealing, but there's a reason why it's titled that way.
This is a true story of four privileged American college students at the University of Transylvania, Kentucky who planned a bizarre robbery of rare, exclusive books in the university library in 2004. The crown jewel is the first edition of John James Audubon book, more like a collection of his paintings of birds, worth a cool $12 million.
Yearning for adventure, excitement and dramatic change in their mundane, midwest lives, the young men plot to pull off the outrageous heist. The college bandits are composed of leader-planner/athlete, Warren Lipka (Evan Peters, "X-Men: Days of Future Past"); number two-idea man/artist, Spencer Reinhard (Barry Keoghan; numbers/logistics man, Eric Borsuk (Jared Abrahamson), and entrepreneur/getaway driver Chas Allen (Blake Jenner, "Supergirl").
The filmmaker cleverly intersperses the scenes with interviews with the real-life robbers and some of the people in their lives at the present time. They show the dynamics of the relationships, different accounts of what happened, thoughts, doubts, confessions and aftermath. Our lives are a collection of choices. There are moments where you know you may make a life-altering choice; this is when you get to decide. While the aftermath is known from the start, the trip to get there is riveting. The day of the robbery, underscored with a pulse-pounding score, tensely plays out like a ticking bomb.
Co-distributed by MoviePass (if you don't have it, you've missed out!), "American Animals" is a hybrid, crime docu-thriller that is stranger than fiction.
https://www.sdentertainer.com/movies/movie-reviews-american-animals-adrift/
Video: https://tinyurl.com/americananimalsvideo