The Last Days of American Crime

Graham Bricke is torturing a man looking for his money. The man tells him that the Dumois family is never going to stop hunting him. He tells Graham that his boy, Johnny D, gave him up. Graham leaves the man covered in gasoline with a lit cigar in his mouth. As he walks away from the building, the apartment explodes. The US government announces the American Peace Initiative (API), a neural blocker that once activated will affect people's brains, preventing people from committing acts they know to be illegal. People attempt to flee to Canada but many are killed during the attempt.

One year ago, Bricke and his crew were the best bank robbers. As long as they gave the Dumois crime family their cut, they were free to act as they wanted. Bricke's brother Rory prepares to go to prison. Six months later, the government tested their API device, and during the middle of a bank robbery, Bricke and his crew suddenly are halted. They flee with the money they have and one of the crew even gets killed. Dumois's henchman Lonnie comes to Bricke for his money, and Bricke lies and says he no longer has it, saving it to get to Canada. Bricke receives a letter that Rory killed himself in prison. Then, once Johnny D sold him out and the Dumois family got his money, he had nowhere to go. Bricke finds and executes Johnny D.

Bricke meets Shelby Dupree at a bar. Kevin Cash comes looking for Bricke. He was in prison with Rory, and saw Rory murdered by the API signal and prison guards and it was not suicide like Bricke was told. He tells Bricke he wants to steal one billion dollars from them as revenge. The government is buying back stolen money from criminals since once the API is activated the money will be useless, and it will all be in one place. Shelby appears, revealing herself as Kevin's fiancée. They reveal a plan to disrupt one API tower just long enough to complete a heist and make it to Canada before the signal takes over. Bricke eventually agrees to join them, but does not trust them. Meanwhile, Officer William Sawyer is held at gunpoint in the precinct by two people looking for drugs, and he manages to get the gun and shoot one of them and is sent home.

Bricke takes over the job. He needs a few things, including cone warheads that can fight tanks. The only place to steal them from beside the US army is the Dumois family. Bricke reveals he has figured out that Kevin is Dumois's son. Bricke demands to know the truth – Kevin explains that he wants to be out from his family's shadow and leave a legacy as having done the last crime in American history. At a club, Bricke learns that Shelby is a skilled hacker, and hears from Kevin about the API signal is impossible to fight. Later, Sawyer returns to the police station and pleads to be put out on duty, and his supervisor relents. While many police are moving to new jobs, those who stay on will receive an implant that will prevent API from affecting them so they can use force on the citizens. Sawyer asks if he can apply for one and later is given one.

The next day, Bricke meets with his old friend and driver, Ross, to recruit him for the billion dollar job, then goes to see a government official, Jack Morgan, and makes arrangements to trade money in. Shelby helps make counterfeit money to swap with the real money, then goes to meet with FBI agents. It turns out she is an informant for them because they are holding her younger sister in their custody. Because Shelby gives them information on the heist, the agents allow Shelby's sister safe transport to Canada but if she does not cooperate they assure her that her sister will be harmed. It turns out Bricke has been following her and witnesses the interaction.

Kevin drives Bricke to the Dumois compound. After being searched, they are let into the swanky party where Kevin and his sister lead Bricke to Rossi Dumois, Kevin's father. Rossi thought Kevin was dead. He tried to have Kevin killed after Kevin had sex with his second wife, who Rossi later murdered. Rossi pulls out a gun and shoots Kevin, but Kevin throws a weapon off the wall into Rossi's head, seemingly killing him. A wounded Kevin leads Bricke to a stash of weapons, and they shoot their way out of the office. They retrieve the warheads and flee – on the way out, Kevin's sister shoots at him and he kills her as well. Lonnie discovers Rossi dead and is furious.

Bricke confronts Shelby over her working with the FBI and pulls a gun, but is knocked out by Lonnie. Lonnie ties Bricke up and beats him bloody, determined to find Kevin. Shelby stops them by admitting she is Kevin's fiancée and that she is the way they will get to Kevin. Lonnie brings in the man from the beginning who Bricke tortured and gave the cigar to, who is disfigured but survived the explosion. He begins torturing Bricke, then sets a fire and leaves Bricke to die as Shelby looks on in horror. They drive off, and Ross arrives and narrowly rescues Bricke before the entire camper explodes.

Ross drives brick to follow Lonnie, who has Shelby hostage in the backseat, and they engage in a long shootout and chase. Eventually, Bricke's car gets flipped, and he climbs out and steals another one. Lonnie ties up Shelby and injects her with heroin. He then begins tearing her clothes off to rape her, but Bricke arrives and strangles Lonnie from behind, killing him. He then carries Shelby out. Later, he asks Shelby about the FBI. She tells him they are after Kevin and that her sister will be hurt if she does not comply, and they share a kiss. Kevin arrives, and the crew goes over the plan.

Shelby and Ross steal a military truck, which Ross drives into the military compound, then Shelby goes and meets a man named Carl with whom she had previously established a flirtation. He is in charge of starting the API signal. She gets to his office and then subdues him. Bricke brings the money for the government exchange in and gets the real money, but as he and Kevin are leaving Morgan lights a bill on fire and realizes it is counterfeit, leading to a shootout. Bricke and Kevin make their way to the vault. Shelby hacks into the computer system just as the API is launched, stopping Kevin and Bricke as they are working on blowing open the vault. Shelby disrupts the signal, allowing Kevin to finish setting the detonators. Ross meets up with them and they load the truck up and escape.

Sawyer shows up and catches Shelby, and demands to know what is going on. The government manages to get the signal running again, halting Ross and Bricke, but not Kevin, who shoots and murders Ross as Bricke screams in horror. Kevin tells Bricke how in prison, the guards would test the API by forcing him and Rory fight and then turning the API on. They made them do it over and over, and eventually Kevin learned how to overcome the API. When he broke through the API, he killed Rory himself, which got him out of jail. He explains that now he does not feel anything anymore, and shoots Bricke in the stomach, then again in the side of his head, blowing his ear off. He tells Bricke he is a superhero, and Bricke asks if he is bulletproof. The FBI agents appear and shoot Kevin over and over until he dies.

The two agents reveal in front of Bricke that they plan on killing Shelby next to close the case, having lied to her about her safety, and leave Bricke to bleed out and die. Bricke takes a deadly pill he purchased earlier, which should kill him, instead, it ends the API effect, and he shoots and kills the two agents. He gets in the truck with the money and drives off. Meanwhile, Shelby attempts to flee from Sawyer and the two get into a physical brawl until the API begins affecting Shelby. She keeps fighting back, and frustrated and enraged, Sawyer begins strangling her, but she rolls him off the table onto a shard of glass that goes through his neck. Shelby detonates and blows up the facility's server before leaving.

Bricke arrives in the truck and retrieves Shelby. They kiss as they drive the truck through the first barricade before the Canadian border as troops shoot at them. As they approach the final border, they sustain more gunfire but plow through. The next morning, as he struggles to stay alive, Shelby tells Brick she loves him, just before he dies. She takes a bag full of money and leaves before the police arrive to the scene.

Sometime later, Shelby goes with her sister and spreads Rory's ashes into a lake and drives off, living free in Canada.

• Édgar Ramírez as Graham Bricke
• Anna Brewster as Shelby Dupree
• Michael Pitt as Kevin Cash
• Sharlto Copley as William Sawyer
• Patrick Bergin as Rossi Dumois
• Sean Cameron Michael as Pete Slatery

On July 27, 2018, it was announced that Édgar Ramírez would star as a career criminal Graham Bricke in the crime thriller film adaptation of the comic book The Last Days of American Crime by Rick Remender, which would be directed by Olivier Megaton, screenplay written by Karl Gajdusek, set in a near future. The film would be produced by Jesse Berger through Radical Studios, Jason Michael Berman through Mandalay Pictures, and Barry Levine and Kevin Turen.[1] In October 2018, Anna Brewster, Michael Pitt, and Sharlto Copley joined the cast of the film.[2]

Principal photography on the film began on November 6, 2018.[3][4] Filming took place in Cape Town and Johannesburg.[5]

The Last Days of American Crime was released digitally by Netflix on June 5, 2020.[6] It was the top-watched film on the service in its first weekend.[7]

Variety wrote that critics panned the film as "a derivative work that has nothing to say" and that its timing of its release with the killing of George Floyd and the related protests was "a disaster".[8] On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 0% based on 36 reviews, with an average rating of 2.02/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "This Crime is punishment."[9] Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 15 out of 100, based on 12 critics, indicating "overwhelming dislike".[10]

David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film a "D–" and said, "[it's] not just because Olivier Megaton's agonizingly dull Netflix feature is 149 minutes long (a crime unto itself). While there's never really a good moment to introduce a bad movie into the world, this hollow and artless dystopian heist dreck is also a victim of its own relevance."[11] Peter Debruge of Variety called the film "gory, excessive and frequently incoherent" and wrote: "In light of everything that's going on, The Last Days of American Crime seems woefully out of touch, inadvertently offensive (a brutal fight scene in which Copley chokes Shelby seems oblivious to the legacy of real-world police brutality) and like some sloppy relic of what once passed for entertainment."[12]

• The Last Days of American Crime on IMDb