With every new film, Mickey Keating takes an existing genre and makes it his own. For his eighth feature, Crooks, the writer-director ushers viewers to the streetwise underbelly of Chicago, a world ruled by gangsters, assassins and thieves where everyone’s on the take and no one is what they seem. Trash Fire’s Angela Trimbur stars as Faye, a former stick-up artist turned nightclub singer who just lost her job for telling off a rude customer. When a figure from her past reappears with an offer of easy cash and a clean getaway, Faye thinks she’s found her answer. Of course, things are never that simple…

With a supporting cast that includes Ghostlight’s Keith Kupferer, indie legend Joe Swanberg and veteran actress Melora Walters (Boogie Nights, Magnolia), Crooks is a twisty thriller with the punchy heart of a vintage pulp novel. Throughout the film, Keating pays tribute to the muscular aesthetics of directors like Don Siegel and Samuel Fuller with classic noir lighting and spaghetti-western musical cues to amp up the deliciously heightened style. The rat-a-tat dialogue also can’t help but evoke ‘90s crime stylists like Quentin Tarantino and the Coen Brothers, but, in the end, Crooks is a Mickey Keating movie through and through.—Frédéric Boyer