‘American Animals’: True crime that’s entertaining and profound

There are a few intriguing questions raised by “American Animals,” a fact-based drama about four college-age men who in 2004 attempted a misguided heist of rare books — including John James Audubon’s “Birds of America,” said to be worth $12 million — from the library of Transylvania University in Lexington, Ky.

Why did they do it? What have they learned from it? And will anyone really want to watch a movie about foolish people who during one abortive attempt to make off with the oversize volume of ornithological prints disguise themselves badly as elderly men?

The answer to the last question is yes. Written and directed by English filmmaker Bart Layton, “American Animals” is fascinating, funny and, in the end, deep.

The answers to the other two questions are more elusive.

“American Animals” is lightly fictionalized: The words “This is not a true story” appear on-screen at the start, only to have the “not” disappear, indicating a relationship with the truth that acknowledges both its aspirational qualities and its unknowability.

Like last year’s marvelous “I, Tonya,” “American Animals” is based on interviews with the perpetrators, Spencer Reinhard, Warren Lipka, Eric Borsuk and Chas Allen. Their often contradictory accounts of their crime are peppered throughout the film, guiding us through the re-enactments even as they call them into question.

At times, the four men briefly appear alongside the actors who portray them (respectively, Barry Keoghan, Evan Peters, Jared Abrahamson and Blake Jenner), lending the film an additional patina of surrealism. They are not just tellers of the tall tale, Layton suggests, but participants in and witnesses to it.

That embrace of factuality’s slippery nature lends the film a delirious headiness, turning what might otherwise have been just another true-crime story into something more philosophical and complex. At its core, “American Animals” is most interested in this question: What is it about these four examples of the American millennial, all products of Lexington’s elite high schools, that led to their sense of entitlement and impunity?

Keoghan is the central character here, delivering a finely nuanced portrait of apathy turned to amorality. His castmates are also good, with Ann Dowd (so creepy in “The Handmaid’s Tale”) delivering a particularly fine performance as the beleaguered librarian Betty Jean Gooch, who was tied up, shot with a stun gun and blindfolded during the robbery.

“American Animals,” while an entertaining version of a heist film at times, is no “Ocean’s 8.” Its signature moment occurs not during the re-enactment of the inept crime, or its planning and antic aftermath. Rather, it comes in the middle of one of Lipka’s interview scenes, when the ex-con, now in his 30s and out of jail, is stunned into tearful, inarticulate silence while reflecting on his own capacity for — and ultimately inability to explain away his rationale for — evil.

This story was originally published June 21, 2018 at 1:58 PM with the headline "‘American Animals’: True crime that’s entertaining and profound."