American Animals (2018)

Not entirely the film I was expecting but interesting all the same. The most arresting element is the way writer and director Bart Layton integrates interviews with the real people into the narrative.

It reminds me a little of Warren Beatty’s film Reds (1981). Beatty uses the interviews more as a counterpoint to the action, adding a layer of authenticity, by including accounts from Jack Reed’s contemporaries. Layton on the other hand, plays it more like a docudrama, creating a tension between comments made, and events as they happen.

It’s a tough line to walk, but he manages not to fall off.

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