The Last Days of American Crime

The Last Days of American Crime is a fairly standard neo-noir heist story about a tough guy who works as a security guard who teams up with a pair of crazy-sexy punks to make a big score. A lust triangle ensues, and one of the guys has to be the odd man out.

If it had stayed on that level I think it would have worked reasonably well. But author Rick Remender wanted to add more than just a twist to the proceedings and I’m not sure if all he added to the mix was a plus.

Here’s what’s new. First of all, the U.S. is switching to an all-digital currency and the trio are looking to steal one of the machines that will control said currency. How? I really wasn’t sure about this, but chalked it up as just a MacGuffin. They could just as easily have been stealing gold or jewels from safety deposit boxes. Second: the heist is on a strict schedule because it has to be done before the government begins broadcasting a signal that will operate as a neuro-inhibitor, preventing people from committing any crimes or doing anything that they know is wrong. How? Well, I couldn’t explain the science to you, because there isn’t any, but even granting such a signal was possible I don’t see how it would work on a practical level. There are thousands of laws people break every day because they’re unaware of them. Do those get shut down as well? Or what happens when a psychopath who doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong decides he wants to keep killing people? This latter is a question that gets asked, and answered, in the finale here, and it underscores how little thought went into what’s called the American Peace Initiative.

Why add such a gimmicky pair of plot elements to such a basic heist story? Maybe just because the heist story was so basic Remender thought he needed something really “out there” to jazz it up. And I guess digital currencies and behavioral control are current issues, playing off fears of things like China’s social credit system. But meanwhile, the America we see before the signal is a hellscape of carnage: all domestic terrorism, gang violence, and bodies piling up in the streets. I guess something should be done about that. I mean, the bad guys are thinking of fleeing to either Mexico or Canada, and Mexico seems to be ahead of the country that’s full of “moose-fucking, commie-Mountie, hockey motherfuckers.”

In sum: it’s very violent, somewhat hard to follow, and unnecessarily futuristic, but I did find it a stylish riff on an old story that has some juice in it yet.

Graphicalex