Bart Layton’s American Animals is in theaters now, and you know it’s one of my favorite movies of the year. The film stars Evan Peters, Barry Keoghan (who I spoke with here), Ann Dowd, and more, chronicling one of the most unusual thefts in history. So yeah, I love it, but I don’t dig the marketing campaign which has been too clever by half. Maybe it was fear, but the most intriguing aspect of the film, its documentary aspects that blend fact and fiction, have been kept hidden. The result is making the film look fairly generic when that’s absolutely not the case.
Fortunately, somebody finally figured out the mistake and have rectified that by releasing the first four minutes of American Animals. They show just a tiny bit of the moments before the actual heist, in which a group of college kids attempted to steal rare books, including John James Audobon’s Birds of America, from the local library. I also gives a look at how Layton melds the documentary elements into the narrative, which results in one of the most unique heist movie in years.
American Animals is in theaters now and you should be seeking it out.
