Name: The Delinquents
Item: The Delinquents
Rating: 4

The Delinquents

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Director: Rodrigo Moreno

Cert: 15A

Genre: Drama

Starring: Daniel Elías, Esteban Bigliardi, Margarita Molfino, Germán De Silva

Running Time: 3 hrs 9 mins

It sounds like the perfect plan. Moran (Daniel Elías), a bored bank employee, calculates that, as a trusted cashier, he can stash a comfortable lifetime’s worth of money into a backpack and hand his haul over to similarly dull colleague Román (Esteban Bigliardi). Moran will confess and serve 3½ years; Román will look after the money. Afterwards, they will retire on the swag.

Of course, there’s a snag. Moran needs protection on the inside from a thuggish fellow inmate (Germán De Silva, who comically doubles as the bank’s director). Meanwhile, a dogged bank investigator (Trenue Lauquen’s Laura Peredes, twinkling even as the “bad cop”) is keeping an eye on Román. The co-conspirators hatch a new plan. They’ll take some of the money, then hide the rest on a hillside in rural Córdoba. Of course, there’s another snag. In the countryside, Román falls for a classic manic pixie dream girl, Norma (Margarita Molfino).

In the late 1990s, Rodrigo Moreno was counted among the more exciting talents emerging through the new Argentinian cinema. A quarter of a century later, he fits snugly within the newer Argentinian wave of Demián Rugna, Carolina Markowicz and Laura Citarella.

Confounding twists and turns abound in Moreno’s first feature for more than a decade. Mind games complement the double-jobbing actors in this unhurried Strangers on a Train-adjacent yarn. The names of the main five characters are anagrams of each other. (Norma’s sister is named Morna and her brother-in-law in Ramon.) For the third film in as many years, the great Paredes plays a character called Laura. The quietly convincing leads Elías and Bigliardi occupy very different points on the deadpan spectrum. The denouement isn’t entirely satisfactory, but with a journey this epic, who cares about the destination?