To Fool a Thief

As our program says, "Who can scam a scammer?" This wonderful heist caper from Argentina (English captions) delighted a full house at the 2014 Seattle International Film Festival this afternoon. "Vino Para Robar" does indeed involve stealing wine, so the original caption is pretty apt, too.

Director Ariel Winograd brings us:

• Daniel Handler as Sebastián, a high-end cat burglar, hot on the trail of a gold mask in an art museum. It is instantly obvious that this handsome fellow knows precisely what he is doing!
• Pablo Rago is Mario, Sebastián's vitally important tech support. This bespectacled guy just screams "geek" but his back-up value is indisputable. His German girlfriend taught him, "Sometimes even a blind chicken finds a grain of corn."
• Valeria Bertuccelli is Natalia, who isn't immediately obvious as a thief, until she slickly outwits our hero. He never sees it coming; she's such a blabbermouth, he doesn't realize she's smart. But they join forces for that rare bottle of Malbek...sorta...

This launches a series of crosses, double crosses, criss crosses and every other kind of cross I can think of. I love to watch smart people try to outwit other smart people. It keeps me guessing as well as the characters. I looked around and the audience was raptly fixated on the screen because sometimes the clues were subtle, other times, not so much...

We had great fun!