“Crime 101” is a slick, smart, well-cast and well-acted heist thriller about taking and getting yours in a world that’s taking “yours” every day and in every way.

It makes a fine star vehicle not just for hunky Chris Hemsworth as the thief, but for Halle Berry as a high-end insurance agent, Mark Ruffalo as a rumpled, maverick police detective, Barry Keoghan as a violent and impulsive junior thief, with chewy roles for Nick Nolte, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tate Donovan and Monica Barbaro to boot.

The latest from “American Animals” director Bart Layton, based on a novella by crime fiction icon Don Winslow, has a pun for a title — the crimes are committed within getaway distance of Southern Cal’s 101 freeway — and some pretty good antecedents referenced in its world, its characters, its story and its style.

“The Thomas Crown Affair” is mentioned in a chat between cop and robber over favorte Steve McQueen movies. But “The Getaway” also comes to mind in this story of a crook being double-crossed by the guy who commissions the jobs.

And the production design and Erik Wilson’s cinematography suggest the sheen of affluent LA, with layers of working class and underworld grit underneath, propping the whole “La La Land” illusion up.

The patient pacing and low-simmer suspense is reminscent of Michael Mann’s genre classic “Heat,” but the martial drums and rhythms of the Blank Mass’s pulsing, pounding score give this generic tale with twists a flavor all its own.

Hemsworth stars as our brooding lone robber, a guy who hits high end jewelry couriers on their way between stores, or from the airport on their way to a store. He gets his hands on various black Dodge Chargers, puts on his gloves and ski mask and dashes to work. The threats at gunpoint are obvious, but nobody gets hurt so long as they follow his “Get in the trunk” instructions.

“Personally, I wouldn’t die for the insurance company.”

Grizzled Nolte is the veteran crook who sets these robberies in motion. Ruffalo is the never-promoted detective “obsessed with this Lone Ranger/Lone wolf” modus operandi he alone recognizes in a police department obsessed with numbers — “clearance (cleared cases) rates.”

Berry plays the veteran closer at a high end insurance agency “for people who have more money than they know what to do with.” Her sex appeal has been a key to her rise up the ranks. But she’s over 50 and that “partnership” still hasn’t happened.

The carefully-planned heist that opens the picture goes just wrong enough to make our thief take stock of his empty life of beachside apartments, fancy wardrobe, $12,000 watches, call girls and collectible Camaros. Maybe he’s close to “a number than I have in mind” that’ll let him “retire.” Maybe that PR agency employee (Monica Barbaro, who played Joan Baez in “A Complete Unknown”) who rear-ends him in traffic could be more than a one-night stand.

But his fence/heist-arranger (Nolte) won’t like that. He brings in a bleached-blond punk (Keoghan) to take on jobs the “101 Thief” won’t. The violent dirt-bike robber will also spy on his predecessor with an eye towards stealing from the jewel thief.

Layton’s script deftly tracks four characters, with four agendas and four points of view, spiraling towards a collision in the third act. Learning the story is based on a novella and not a novel comes as no surprise. The film dispenses with “Where’s he get the cars? Where does he STORE them?” and plenty of other mildly interesting but not vital details.

The leanness in the storytelling spills over into characters. Our dogged cop’s marriage (Jennifer Jason Leigh) reaches an abrupt end. Our insurance agent starts to see the “scam” her business is, and the sorts of characters who thrive in that environment.

And a wary 30something cubicle drone (Barbaro) practically interrogates and tests our thief, which he can’t afford or even like. But we like he have to accept that she’s pretty enough to be worth the risk.

“Crime 101” never overcomes its genre formula limitations. You could set your watch by the action beats — robberies, chases, confrontations — which tick over exactly when you expect them. And the finale has an anti-climactic tidiness about it that seems focus-grouped onto the screen.

But money spent on this cast was well-spent. The performances are riveting but never shake the reality the players and Layton anchor their characters in. Donovan is just icky enough as a victim-to-be, Nolte, Leigh and Berry were tailor-made for their roles and Ruffalo does “Columbo” rumpled so well he could get a TV remake pitch out of this.

Hemsworth makes a sturdy but wounded and furtive eye-contact-averting career criminal who hides his nature behind a chiseled, sharply-dressed veneer.

And Keoghan dials up the twitchy, manic, not-wholly-thought-this-through impulses of his “punk” version of a thief. He brings tasty bits of acting business to most every scene he’s in. Watch him rhythmically knock his head against the back wall of an elevator as he tenses up and gets his game face on for a bit of third act ultraviolence. Tell me he doesn’t lift this generic thriller that never escapes its genre into something damned engrossing and entertaining to boot.

Rating: R, graphic violence, profanity

Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Halle Berry, Mark Ruffalo, Barry Keoghan, Tate Donovan, Monica Barbaro, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Nick Nolte.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Bart Layton, based on a novella by Don Winslow. An MGM release.

Running time: 2:19