Heroic Losers (Sebastián Borenztein)

[Grouchy]

https://pics.filmaffinity.com/La_odisea_de_los_giles-840515122-large.jpg

[Grouchy]

Since "gil" is not a word that exists outside of Argentinian slang, the translators have chosen to name this Heroic Losers, which is OK but... awfully literal. I would have gone with A Schmuck's Odyssey. I don't think "schmuck" is quite the same as "gil" but it's close enough.

Anyway, this film deals with a group of friends and neighbours who raise money to jump start an abandoned factory in a small Buenos Aires town. They get ripped off by the bank and a local millionaire during the 2001 Argentinian crisis, and when they figure out their dollars are buried in a field, they come up with a plan to steal them back. It's done in the classic template of a heist movie and it even references classic heist movies like How to Steal a Million through DarÃ*n's character who is an old movie buff. Of course it's a socially conscious heist movie and, to be honest, though the heist itself is unrealistic, the original theft of lifetime savings probably happened in some way or another at the time, which gives the film an empathy and drive that any Argentinian person who lived through 2001 will be quick to recognize. It comes from a place of real anger.

The movie itself is only good, not great, but entertaining as hell. I think its only real problem is that the cast of characters is too broad to focus on all of them, and many are left hanging wihtout real character arcs or function only as comic relief. Which would be OK for one character, but when four or five of them are consistently one-note and don't evolve at all during the course of the running time, there's a script problem. But other than that, it's solid and worth seeing.