Morán (Daniel Elías) has grown weary working every day at the bank and is still some twenty years away from retirement.  One afternoon, the opportunity presents itself, and Morán steals $625,000 from the safe; enough money for him and an accomplice to retire early on.  He meets with Román (Esteban Bigliardi), one of his colleagues, that evening and brings him in on the plan.  All Román has to do is hide the money and stay quiet while Morán, who will turn himself in to the police, serves his 3.5-year sentence.  Once he is released, the two will split the money and finally live a life of freedom. 

Rodrigo Moreno writes and directs The Delinquents, a sprawling modern fantasy that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival where Moreno was nominated Un Certain Regard.  Mubi handled the distribution for the 190-minute title, giving it a limited theatrical run ahead of its debut on their streaming platform.  The Spanish-language film was well received by audiences and became Argentina’s submission for the 96th Academy Awards, though it missed out on the nomination.  Across its runtime, Moreno presents a thoughtful, quiet story, presenting a bank heist in the most meditative way possible resulting in a thoughtful film that is unlike anything else within the genre. Despite its somewhat unorthodox approach, the film is highly watchable and instantly engaging with a keen sense of sneaky humor that is quick to delight audiences with its brand of oddball sensibility. 

One of the boldest moves of the film is how it handles the heist with the same mundanity as if Morán was making the deposit as scheduled.  It is done within the first 30 minutes, the simple act of placing the bundles of cash into his backpack and then clocking out for the day.  There is more tension surrounding the signature of one of the clients (Adriana Aizemberg) who will now be unable to cash her check until this matter is resolved than there is this theft which perfectly encapsulates the indictment of the innocents that often happens in modern business where profit is king.  The handling of the theft is almost comical, not because it is a farce or that there are any riot lines given to Morán, but because it is so nonchalant about the whole affair.  This style of humor will carry on throughout the entire film and helps to keep things lighthearted enough as both Morán and especially Román completely upend their lives. 

The film is split into two parts, and while the break does little to separate or demarcate a major shift in the narrative, The Delinquents is still most easily looked at as two stories because it is structured around the lives of these two men.  Morán presents himself initially as the de facto lead of the film, but for large portions of its runtime, he is absent from the screen having made good on his promise to turn himself into the authorities and is serving his sentence in prison.  It is a testament to Elías’ performance, then, that his presence is noticeably missed as the action unfolds in the outside world, but also a testament to Moreno as a storyteller that we do not feel a victim of a bait and switch when it becomes clear that Bigliardi will be the one occupying much of our time while we are with the film. 

At his wits end, Morán is doing what he can to get by, but totally scorned as he punches the clock day in and day out realizing more and more each day that playing by the rules is little more than a slow march towards death with little to show for it.  To gain his freedom he commits what is essentially a victimless crime as the bank’s funds are insured and the manager, Del Toro (Germán De Silva), insists that news of the robbery be kept internal so as not to lose trust with the public while the bank undergoes an audit and investigation.  Moreno is constantly using The Delinquents to put the onus of blame for Morán’s actions on the people who created an environment where the man was forced to steal or continue to rot away at his desk.  Notably, though, Moreno does not treat Morán like a valorized anti-hero, as while he is away, the fallout from his actions at the bank are wide-reaching.  His coworkers, those who were not fired for infractions, are demoted in position and their pay cut, but Morán – at least once his sentence is up – is insulated from this, and we see that he has carved out quite a respectable life for himself within the prison hierarchy.   The film’s moral compass may be sitting on top of a magnet making it hard to get a read either way, but like all questions of morals, it comes down to a choice; play by the rules and work for 40 years at a job that holds no allegiance to you, or bend them, and live freely for the better half of your adult life. 

Morán, however, is not the only one making bold choices here, but also Moreno who structures his heist film in a most lyrical way.  There is no glitz and glam like from a Steven Soderbergh-led caper, but rather, Alejo Maglio’s camera moves at a much more steadied pace.  Visually, the film feels like a still slightly speedier cousin to the later works of Terrance Malick, and it makes sense that both Moreno and Malick, on the page, have similar fascinations as they direct their characters to stop and take in the world around them.  The Delinquents slows down to enjoy a meal, read poetry, and notably, Román’s girlfriend, Flor (Gabriela Saidon) teaches music; all expressions of art that get pushed to the fringes of our lives as we punch away at the office. When Román meets Norma (Margarita Molfino) and gets stuck in the rain on the side of a mountain with her and a small film crew working on a documentary about the native flora, the group plays a game naming cities in which they would love to travel to pass the time.  Moreno’s thesis is simple, we are meant to enjoy life and all its wonders.  

While it sounds like The Delinquents may be a meandering and conflict-free experience given how quickly it buttons up the issue of the theft, that could not be further from the truth.  As mentioned, Bigliardi’s Román controls much of the narrative flow of the film, and he is entangled in a whole host of conflicts between the moral conundrum of accepting Morán’s proposal, to his already strained life with Flor, further complicated when he meets Norma while returning from a days-long trip to hide the money in the mountains; a trip which he did not tell Flor about before embarking.  Norma brings a new energy to the film as she flirts with Román and the two begin a sporadic romance moving from hotel room to hotel room, city to city, seeing and experiencing far more than Román would have back at the bank.  We know that this affair is wrong, but much like with Morán’s crimes, the film does its best to, not justify, per se, but rather allow us to understand why it is happening and why it can not be immediately written off as bad. 

Like a fable, the film concludes with the eventual damning of its sinners, though, strangely, Morán has the glean of a hero even though it is his original action that sets Román down his slowly destructive path.  Ultimately, Morán finds that fresh start he was looking for, fulfilled yet with less, he is one with nature, one with wilderness, riding a horse across the countryside as the film fades to black.  Román returns to reality with material wealth, but all signs point to an emotionally empty and unfulfilling future all the same. Nobody here is a winner and crime does not pay, so while Moreno was making a pretty solid argument that life is worth more than wasting away at a desk, it is still ultimately a fate that will come for us all. That dour note is still wrapped in the beautiful landscapes and score so that it does not become immediately apparent, but as The Delinquents continues to unfold in the minds of its audience – and certainly, it will linger long after the credits roll – that sad, monotonous reality begins to set in, but we can revel along with Morán, Román, and Norma and the memories of when they felt what they thought was freedom.