“It makes me wonder if they really know why they did it.”

From American Animals.

In 2003, Warren Lipka (Evan Peters) and Spencer Reinhard (Barry Keoghan)–mainly out of boredom–begin to plan a robbery.  When Spencer is allowed to go on tour of the Transylvania University library’s Special Collections Room which is filled with many priceless first edition books and letters, he tells Warren about his tour and they quickly form a plan to steal the book of Audubon’s paintings, Darwin’s Origins of Species, and other multi-million dollar books.  Over the next year and a half, the friends go to work on studying the layout of the building, locating a fence, and developing a foolproof plan that will allow the boys to go from average to millionaires overnight.  As the day draws closer, they realize that the plan is lacking people in order to be successful, so they bring in Eric Borsuk (Jared Abrahamson) and Chas Allen (Blake Jenner) to help them pull off the multi-million dollar heist.  Together, the boys prepare for every possible outcome and just have to stick to the plan to remain anonymous when they strike it rich… as long as they don’t freak out when it comes to the librarian (Ann Dowd) and stick to the plan, they will even still have time to study for finals.

This sorta-documentary alternates between interviews with the real life Reinhard, Lipka, Borsuk, Allen and the actor-portrayed story, so that the movie has sort of an I, Tonya feel to it.  Because the movie’s format allows for several fourth wall breaks and displays of the errors of human memory that really make it captivating and endearing.  All the central plot twists keep viewers riveted to the screen until the very end.  The cast is solid specially with Peters who leads as the perfect blend of erratic and calculating.  This true crime thriller/documentary is unique, which makes American Animals definitely worth the watch.

| Rated: R | Running Time: 117 minutes |Genre: thriller/crime/biography |

||Family Viewing||Cursing: 8* of 10|Nudity: 0 of 10|Sexuality: 0 of 10|Gore: 1 of 10

|AVAILABLE FOR HOME VIEWING|