American Animals

AMERICAN ANIMALS (2018) Cert 15 
Evan Peters, Barry Keoghan, Blake Jenner, Jared Abrahamson. Directed by Bart Layton (1hr 52m) 

This year's movie Saltburn catapulted Irish actor Barry Keoghan into the front ranks of actors from the British Isles, but one of his first and most impressive lead roles was in Bart Layton's superb crime drama American Animals. It's a brilliantly audacious thriller, telling the true story of four disaffected college students who set out to steal the world’s most expensive book, John James Audubon’s masterpiece of ornithological art ‘Birds of America’. Keoghan shares the lead with Evan Peters, who plays the architect of the meticulously plotted but absurdly ill-conceived heist. The robbery itself is one thing, but how then to find a buyer for such a universally well-known artefact? In a unique twist on the usual format of thrillers like this, the edge-of-your seat dramatisation is intercut with documentary-style interviews with the real-life participants, all still struggling to come to terms with how and why they did what they did. The result is an absolute triumph: a funny, thrilling and truly original piece of bravura filmmaking.