The Truth About The Leads of American Animals Is That These Are Not Bright Guys And Things Got Out of Hand

When plotting out how to do American Animals, one must imagine the creative personnel involved in this project were torn between doing a documentary or a traditional narrative feature covering the real-life story of a bunch of college dudes who, on basically a lark, decided to plan a heist of their Kentucky college's highly expensive books. Trying to decide between these two ways of telling this story in movie form likely was a trying decision until somebody came up with the idea of just merging the two by way of having present-day testimonies from the people involved in this heist sprinkled throughout a traditional feature film based on these men's exploits.

Before They Directed Avengers: Infinity War, The Russo Brothers Directed A Subversion of Heist Movies Titled Welcome To Collinwood

Between placing Captain America into a political thriller or filtering a paintball battle between the lead characters of the show Community through the prism of a spaghetti Western, it's clear directors Anthony and Joe Russo enjoy juxtaposing specific genres with characters you might not expect to inhabit those specific genres. This recurring fixture of their work can be clearly seen in their 2002 directorial effort Welcome To Collinwood, which takes the premise of a typical heist movie and has it led by a gaggle of unorthodox characters that are the polar opposite of conventional lead characters in traditional heist movies.