Like many a successful criminal, probably, Mike Davis (Chris Hemsworth) is a man of no fixed address. You could say he lives on the 101 — the long interstate highway that runs from Los Angeles up into Washington state, occasionally connecting with the beachy Pacific Coast Highway. Davis is a high-end jewel thief who operates out of a succession of oceanfront condos he rents every few months to set up his latest capers. His targets are local jewelers he knows will soon be taking delivery of new stock — diamonds, generally — and will thus be ideal targets for one of Davis' meticulously planned heists.

It's a prosperous life, but a lonely one, too, and Davis is looking to leave it behind. All he needs is one big score to net him enough "walk away" money to retire and maybe get a real life. His fence, a tough old bird called Money (Nick Nolte), suggests a possible job up in Santa Barbara, but Davis doesn't like the look of it — it could be dangerous.

Davis is hyper-cautious and professionally nonviolent and has never injured anyone in all his years of thievery. This fact has been noted by an LAPD detective named Lubesnick (Mark Ruffalo), who's become convinced that all the jewel heists up and down the 101 over the past few years have been the work of one guy. And he's determined to take him down.

The story is drawn from a 2020 novella by California crime laureate Don Winslow, and it has some of the satisfactions of vintage noir, filled with shadowy suspicions and rivers of headlights pouring through the soft Pacific night. And English director Bart Layton ("American Animals") skillfully punctuates the character interactions with bravura bursts of '90s-style automotive action.

Winslow's plot, well served by a solid cast, is absorbing, if not as stylishly gripping as an old Michael Mann film like "Thief," or a Steve McQueen classic of the sort fondly discussed by two of the characters here ("The Thomas Crown Affair" gets a big thumbs-up). Drawn into Davis' orbit, along with Lubesnick, is Sharon Combs (Halle Berry), a luxury-market insurance adjuster who's being screwed over by her bosses because she's reached the sell-by age of 53. She is mightily teed off about this, but there may be hope for retribution — Sharon also knows the details of a billionaire's upcoming family wedding ... which could also be of interest to Davis — and maybe to a murderous little weasel named Ormon (Barry Keoghan), who pops up looking to make his bones in the heist business as well. With his arrival, blood and bullets begin to flow.

Much of the pleasure to be had from this movie derives from the craft of its construction — there's something bracing about how slickly put-together it is, as if it had been beamed in from another action era. Best of all, it has Monica Barbaro on hand to provide a love interest for Hemsworth's moody lone wolf. Barbaro, who gave such a fully inhabited performance as Joan Baez in last year's "A Complete Unknown," fires off beams of chemistry in her scenes with Hemsworth, and energizes the picture whenever she appears onscreen.

Photos courtesy of Amazon MGM