Barry Keoghan, Evan Peters
“AMERICAN ANIMALS” My rating: C+
116 minutes | MPAA rating: R
In “American Animals” four college-age doofuses rob a university library of a priceless copy of Audubon’s massive Birds of America.
Based on real events, the film is as much about these losers’ deluded dreams as it is about the planning and execution of the heist.
Writer/director Bart Layton attempts to add perspective to this shambling crime story by alternating between fictional recreations of the robbery and interviews with the actual participants. Now in their mid-30s, these men sometimes contradict one another…when that happens Layton will often replay a scene “Rashomon”-style, now altered to reflect a different individual’s memories (or inventions).
Spencer (Barry Keoghan) and Warren (Evan Peters) are childhood friends attending different colleges in Lexington, KY. They are bored, unfulfilled children of Middle America, and when they learn that the Transylvania University library has a locked-down room displaying the Audubon book and other treasures (like a first edition of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species) they begin to consider if they could rob the place. (more…)
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