Los Angeles Times

A caper and its consequences in true-crime saga of 'American Animals'

One of the many allures of heist movies is the clockwork precision of seeing an audacious idea conceived and executed according to plan. The new film "American Animals" takes a very different approach - the characters' grandiose fantasies go every kind of wrong.

After an opening title card proudly claims "This is a true story," the movie tells the saga of a failed caper in which four male college students attempted to steal millions of dollars of rare books from Transylvania University in Lexington, Ky., in December 2004.

In the movie, now in limited release and expected to expand, Warren Lipka (Evan Peters), Spencer Reinhard (Barry Keoghan), Eric Borsuk (Jared Abrahamson) and

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