Pirating Hollywood movies, which is the sideline of one of the characters in Ladron Que Roba a Ladron, isn't generally considered the most noble of professions. Then again, some might argue that ripping off Hollywood amounts to poetic justice, part of a natural order whereby thieves rob their fellow thieves (a rough translation of this movie's title). And if that theft can be accomplished with a touch of wit and style, so much the better.
Ladron Que Roba a Ladron blatantly steals not just from Hollywood but from the entire global database of cinema, riffing on classic heist films from Rififi to Ocean's Eleven while putting a unique ethnic and socio-political spin on the proceedings. The heroes here are Alejandro and Emilio (Latino megastars Fernando Colunga and Miguel Varoni), two illegal immigrants living the American Dream according to Dylan's memo that "to live outside the law, you must be honest." In the tradition of Clooney and Pitt — as well as Robin Hood and Abbie Hoffman — Alejandro and Emilio are "good thieves" targeting a "bad thief": unscrupulous Latino man-about-town Moctezuma (Saul Lizaso), whose infomercials for fake cancer cures have made him filthy rich at the expense of poor, mostly Spanish-speaking consumers.
Putting a crew together is an essential part of every heist movie, and, in one of Ladron Que Roba's more clever twists, the one assembled here is drawn from the ranks of the immigrant work force — the reasoning being that these virtual nonpersons are so "invisible" that no one will pay particular attention to what they're up to.
Gathering together a crew of gardeners, mechanics, parking valets and fry cooks, Alejandro and Emilio devise and put into action a plan to sneak into Moctezuma's mansion, steal the huge piles of cash the guy keeps on the premises (apparently just to tempt brazen thieves), and give the money back to the scores of penniless immigrants the creep has bilked over the years.
There's not much going on in Ladron Que Roba a Ladron that's particularly original, but the movie wins points for its rendering — sort of like a chef coming up with a novel sauce to go with broiled chicken. Sometimes the movie's cultural variations on genre clichés are amusing, but other times they're just more of the same. Appealing as they are, Alejandro's crew basically consists of stereotypes (including a beautiful tomboy who inevitably falls for the Latino tough guy she's spent most of the movie bickering with) — and the heist, once it happens, turns out to be pretty routine stuff, with lots of plot holes allowing our heroes to pull things off much more easily than they should.
Even more problematic, there are a few places where this mostly breezy and cheeky outing stops dead in its tracks and allows one of the characters to sneak in some overly earnest advocacy of immigrants' rights. Not helping matters much are the violin strings swelling with emotion behind these mini-speeches, all delivered in Spanish, naturally, as is the entire movie with the exception of a handful of words and phrases.
The only substantial bit of English heard in Ladron Que Roba a Ladron occurs toward the film's end, when an Anglo security guard berates an apparently uncomprehending janitor, telling him that if he's going to live in this country, he's got to "learn the language." The janitor turns out to actually be one of the thieves (he's also, not insignificantly, played by the movie's screenwriter), and when the tables turn and his true identity is revealed, he delivers his exit line in English, just to make sure we all get the point.
"You're in America — learn Spanish, A-hole!" he mocks in perfect, full-bodied English, then darts out of sight to reap his rewards.
Cross-cultural pilfering seems to be busting out all over. Also opening in theaters this week is Julie Delpy's 2 Days in Paris, a brief encounter with a mixed Franco-American couple that inevitably evokes Delpy's Before Sunset/Before Sunrise projects with Ethan Hawke, as well as one or two other movies with which you might be familiar.
In addition to writing the screenplay and directing, Delpy stars as Marion, a quirky Frenchwoman on vacation with her even quirkier American boyfriend, Jack (Adam Goldberg). As its title suggests, the movie takes place during a quick stopover on Marion's Parisian home turf, where the couple spends their time strolling and engaging in mostly amusing and nearly nonstop chatter à la the Sunset/Sunrise films.
There's also more than a whiff of Woody Allen here, with Delpy's goofy nervous ticks vaguely recalling the scattered charm of Diane Keaton, while Goldberg's whiney obsessiveness riffs on a lineage of neurotic Jewish comedians encapsulated by Allen. Kvetching about the whole "terrorism thing," Jack won't even ride the subway — France being "a Muslim country, after all."
At points you may also feel like you're watching a Gallic version of Meet the Fockers, as Jack muddles his way through lunch with Marion's flamboyantly eccentric parents (played by Delpy's real-life father and mother, Albert Delpy and Marie Pillet). Dad serves up a scary-looking rabbit, insisting, "Real men eat the head," then proceeds to pay absurdly passionate homage to the likes of Henry Miller and Rambeau. But when push comes to shove, the movie eschews literary wit for considerably less cerebral gags, like Dad guffawing with an open mouth full of food or mom walking in on the couple having sex.
And then 2 Days returns to its raison d'être: Jack and Marion's constant conversation, an ongoing exchange that's not nearly as well modulated or insightful as the tête-à-tête in Sunrise/Sunset, but that provides pleasures of its own. Jack and Marion's banter flows in something close to real time, obsessing over the nature of her laugh (she snorts), then weighing the relative importance of chaos theory and oral sex ("It was a blow job, after all," says Marion, "that brought down America's last chance at a healthy democracy.")
And everywhere they go, Marion's ex-lovers pop out of the woodwork, prompting Jack to suspect they're hitting on her (they are) and revealing the cracks in the couple's relationship with a forced poignancy that doesn't mesh all that well with the essentially lighter-than-air nature of Delpy's cinematic soufflé.
A clumsy voice-over periodically attempts to sum up what the movie is "about," but it's completely unnecessary; here, what you see is what you get. 2 Days in Paris doesn't do itself favors by inviting such close comparisons to the movies that inspired it, but the conversation is usually engaging, the scenery pretty and the price of admission a whole lot cheaper than a plane ticket to Paris.
This article appears in Aug 29 – Sep 4, 2007.