To Rob a Thief (2007) poster
2007 · action · adventure · comedy · heist

To Rob a Thief

Directed by Joe Menendez1h 38m2007
ElsewhereIMDb6.62kRT64%Metacritic61
  • warm
  • kinetic
Movie DNA

Warm, breathless, measured action / adventure, grounded in texture. Ambivalent, mid-stakes, measured, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

How every film is hand-scored →

Emilio, a Colombian con man, arrives in LA with two weeks to complete his plan to rob a former colleague, Claudio Silvestrini, who's made a fortune using infomercials to peddle snake oil to Latin immigrants. Emilio's friend Alejandro, who sells pirated DVDs, has assembled a team of amateurs, who, as Alejandro says, will go unnoticed because they're immigrants. The team must gain entry to Silvestrini's well-guarded mansion, steal two keys to access a vault, and then get the money off the property. A father and his tomboy daughter, a nervous Cuban actor, a techie, and a muscle man make up the team, plus Alejandro has been courting Silvestrini's nanny. Will they be enough?

Our read · To Rob a Thief (2007) reads as a warm, breathless, grounded action · adventure · comedy entry — measured in intensity, mid-stakes in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

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The shape of To Rob a Thief

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want a fun Spanish-language heist comedy with immigrant crew vs shady mogul.

ends upliftingyou’ll be fine aftergrabs you earlygrips by minute 6attention 2/5breezes bysubtitles: full
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around

Skip it tonightYou want English or serious crime drama without comedy heist energy.

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
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