Film Review – American Animals

Writer/director Bart Layton made an industry splash with 2012’s “The Imposter,” saucing up documentary formula by adding some sense of theatricality to the work, blurring the line between information and performance. He’s back with “American Animals,” which is a similar endeavor, only here the emphasis is on drama, putting actors partially in charge of recreating a true crime event that occurred nearly 15 years ago in Kentucky. While Layton’s already made other film and TV projects, he seems intent on proving his cinematic chops this time around, keeping “American Animals” steeped in style and attitude, but there’s little else that sticks after a viewing, finding the material too manipulative and the story too familiar to successfully keep the effort from resembling anything but a showy director’s reel.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com