For Morán (Daniel Elías), the protagonist of The Criminals, his work has become a sentence. The only alternative he finds is to plan a robbery. He decides to steal a sum from the bank that will ensure his retirement and turn himself in to the police, while his partner Román (Esteban Bigliardi) hides the loot. Morán does not want to be a millionaire, he wants to be free. He prefers three years in prison to 25 more as a bank employee. “I felt gratitude from the viewers for not making the film I had to make, but rather the one I wanted,” Argentine director Rodrigo Moreno reveals to La Vanguardia. With a narrative structure far removed from the conventional, the director takes his time (189 minutes) to immerse the audience in a journey that offers “a respite within a cinematographic offering that has become very predictable.” Acclaimed at festivals, this “rara avis” that can already be seen in cinemas, aspires to recognition at the Oscars as best international film.
In a list that lists the best films of 2023, between Barbie and Oppenheimer, the media Indiewire gave The Criminals the thirteenth position. “Look what a Martian movie they put there,” jokes its director in disbelief. The thing is that the film does not respond to any of the success formulas used by its competition. Still, it has captivated audiences in more than 70 countries. The idea for the film arose from a commission given to the filmmaker to adapt the Argentine classic Barely a Criminal (1951), by Hugo Fregonese. “I turned down the offer basically because I wasn't interested in the main character's motivation.” A rather unfriendly man, with whom it is difficult to empathize. But the idea remained echoing in the director's mind. “Why is it stolen? to have a free life. That idea was what gave traction when building the story.”
The film is structured in two parts, with a first story that gradually turns into another. It begins in the chaotic center of the city of Buenos Aires, and then gives way to the tranquility of the landscapes in the mountains of the province of Córdoba. Two totally opposite concepts of life. In the city, “the first thing you ask when you meet someone is what they do,” says the protagonist at one point in the film. If work is at the center of our existence, what happens when we work for others? “The dependency relationship threatens the freedom of human beings to have their own time,” says the director. “In Marxist terms, owning the means of production.”
The premiere of this ode to freedom by Rodrigo Moreno coincides with a key moment in the political history that his country is going through. “We have to talk about freedom at this moment in Argentina,” says the director in reference to the new elected president, the liberal libertarian Javier Milei. “What Milei proposes is precisely the opposite, market freedom, that is, the freedom for companies to dispose of and do with us whatever they want.”
“Cinema was very relegated in the audiovisual world.” For Moreno, films respond more and more to the logic of series: a short narrative full of addictive elements. With the desire to make a place for themselves on the platforms, feature films are fighting for ground in the world of streaming that “clearly has already been lost.” This is perhaps where the success of The Delinquents lies, a film that embraces the support of the public who are "fed up with cinema as it is given to us."
