FOUR STARS
In this column we have many times criticized some characteristics of Rodrigo Moreno’s work (El custodio, Un mundo mysterious) due to the control that the director exercises over characters and plots. But in The Delinquents, beyond the fact that this control exists, there is a will to play and search for the pleasure and happiness of cinema that overcomes any limitation while enhancing the director’s virtues.
In principle, it is a theft film: someone fed up who finds a last possibility in crime. But far from being that criminal melodrama – of great tradition in our cinema -.
The Delinquents goes through several genres and various tones, always in an unpredictable way and, at the same time, completely focused on the credibility of the plot, which always works limpidly even when the film drifts into a multitude of settings, tones and characters. That is to say, Moreno has filmed adventure films that reflect the adventure of cinema itself, of being a means of expression and happiness.
The performers – some playing more than one role, a welcome trend of contamination of the theater that independent Argentine cinema has embraced in recent decades – are perfect and their security in Moreno’s world increases our surprise at the meanderings of the story. From the best of national cinema of 2023 and several more years.
