REVIEW: Los delincuentes [The Delinquents] [2023]

Rating: NR | Runtime: 189 minutes
Release Date: October 16th, 2023 (USA) / October 26th, 2023 (Argentina)
Studio: Maco / MUBI
Director(s): Rodrigo Moreno
Writer(s): Rodrigo Moreno

No, comma, I was NOT aware.

It’s a victimless crime … except, I guess, for the men committing it.

Morán (Daniel Elías) is sick of his job at the bank. So, when the opportunity presents itself to put a deposit in the safe without a co-worker accompanying him, he takes it. In his mind, the three-and-a-half-year jail sentence he assumes he’ll serve after turning himself in (and good behavior) is worth not having to spend another twenty-five in the doldrums of his day job to make the same money before retirement. Take only that amount. Hide it. And reclaim it upon release.

An accomplice is therefore necessary because he cannot be sure his hiding place will be secure unwatched. And since Román (Esteban Bigliardi) leaving work early that day provides him the opportunity to take the money, why not blackmail him into supplying that assistance? He’ll even give him the same amount of money for his trouble. An even split of $600,000+ for just keeping his mouth shut. Except, of course, that doing so is easier said than done once the absence that made him Morán’s target ultimately puts him in the bank’s crosshairs too.

Writer/director Rodrigo Moreno’s The Delinquents is thus one of the most mundane bank robberies in cinematic history precisely because his robbers are so mundane themselves. These are regular people devoid of any real aspirations. They simply embrace the routine of capitalism and try to stay awake while doing it. So, why wouldn’t their dreams be equally quaint? Rather than wealth or notoriety, they seek freedom from the grind. The irony is that they could have just quit their jobs and found this elusive independence without all the additional stress.

That’s where this quiet, three-hour comedy shines. Not the blatant dualities (real prison vs. prison of the mind, Germán De Silva playing two different “bosses” in both men’s lives, and an inevitable love triangle with Margarita Molfino’s Norma). Those are fun and provide the whole a nice clean, circuitous pathway forward towards a pitch-perfect farce of an ending, but the idea that it takes a crazy premise for both men to finally come alive is the real point. That which we all want is usually right in front of us. We’re often too comfortable within society’s patterns to ever take it.