Yucatán

The Heist That Forgot to Steal the Show

I’ve seen enough heist movies to know the drill: the meticulous plan, the motley crew, the double-cross, the getaway. Yucatán knows the drill too, and that’s the problem. It’s a film so in love with the idea of a heist that it forgets to make the heist itself feel alive. Instead, it delivers a series of set pieces that check all the boxes—sun-drenched beaches, bumbling criminals, a suitcase full of cash—without ever making me care whether the money ends up in the right (or wrong) hands.

Daniel Monzón, the Spanish director behind the taut thriller Cell 211, seems to be operating under a different set of rules here. Where that film was all clenched-jaw tension, Yucatán is loose, almost lazy, as if the director decided that a comedy about thieves didn’t need the same precision as a prison break. The result is a movie that moves, but never races; that amuses, but never delights.

It’s like watching a magician pull a rabbit out of a hat, only to realize the rabbit was there all along.

The premise is simple enough: two rival thieves, played by Luis Tosar and Rodrigo de la Serna, board a ferry to Mexico with the same target in mind—a sweet old baker (Joan Pera) who’s just won the lottery and is carrying his winnings in a briefcase. What follows is a game of cat and mouse, with each thief trying to outmaneuver the other while a rotating cast of side characters—including a love interest (Stephanie Cayo) and a pair of bumbling henchmen—complicate the scheme. It’s The Sting meets It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, if those films had been directed by someone who’d had one too many margaritas.