The performance that even Chris Hemsworth admitted was terrible: “I didn’t enjoy what I did in that film”
Out in a couple of weeks’ time is Crime 101, a slick-looking thriller from everyone’s favourite hunky Aussie action hero Chris Hemsworth, in which he gets to look seriously suave in suits, drive high-powered cars and do kissing with Halle Berry as if life wasn’t unfair enough.
It has a name-packed cast including Mark Ruffalo and it continues Hemsworth’s nice little sideline in making decent movies outside of what 90 percent of people know him for, which is of course wielding an enormous hammer and flying around the universe as Thor.
He’s now built up a decent looking CV after around 15 years in Hollywood; aside from the Marvel blockbusters you can find gems like the first Extraction (but more so the sequel), brilliantly twisty horror The Cabin in the Woods, 2024’s excellent Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and especially the retro F1 drama Rush in 2013 in which Hemsworth was superbly convincing as playboy driver James Hunt.
Despite his scene-stealing work in the Avengers movies and his own Thor adventures, Hemsworth is yet to trouble the major awards ceremonies like the Oscars or the Golden Globes, but perhaps that will be to come once he finally retires his mallet and cape. But one film he certainly wouldn’t have been handed anything shiny for was the 2015 action thriller Blackhat from Heat director Michael Mann.
As a concept, alarm bells should have been ringing from the off. Armed with a $70million budget, the filmmakers in their wisdom decided that the person they should have portraying a geeky cyberhacker who plays around with the computer systems of foreign governments should be… possibly the most attractive man in the world, which quite correctly raised more than a few eyebrows among critics on release.
The film bombed quite spectacularly, losing the studio close to $100m and underlining the fact that despite his looks and obvious talent, Hemsworth wasn’t enough of a draw to carry a movie himself outside of Marvel. He was aware of this, though, and spoke about his reservations with Blackhat, revealing: “I didn’t enjoy what I did in the film. It just felt flat, and it was also an attempt to do what I thought people might have wanted to see. But I don’t think I’m good in that space.”
Hemsworth hardly let it hold him back though; in the following ten years he became about as A-list as you can get, with his pivotal role in the Avengers movies bringing in several billions and his sideline on the likes of Extraction 1, 2, (and soon to be 3) chiming with millions on Netflix.
Aside from Crime 101, Hemsworth’s 2026 will of course be taken up by the monumental Avengers: Doomsday in December, the Russo brothers extravaganza that will bring together pretty much every superhero you can think of from the X-Men to the Fantastic Four in an end of the year billion-dollar blowout.
So far, a few little snippets have emerged courtesy of the Marvel YouTube page, including a trailer that focuses on Hemsworth’s Thor getting ready to gear up and get involved in the fun against Dr Doom. It’s on track to not only be the most expensive film ever made, but also the highest grossing in history, with its sights firmly set on 2009’s Avatar which brought in an eye-watering $3bn around the world.
