Crónica dos Bons Malandros (1984) aka Thick as Thieves

This is one odd film. Imagine Monty Python meets Jean-Luc Godard as written by Thomas Pynchon on acid and you come close to grasping what Fernando Lopes' Thick as Thieves is all about. Okay, maybe I am exaggerating, but there really is no other word to describe this one than "odd". The bare-bones plot is about a gang of thieves who only carry out robberies using peaceful methods. They have been contracted by the "Italian" to rob one of Protugal's most famous museums of priceless works of art. To execute their plan, they will release a swarm of bees to foment a general panic before making off with the artwork. While meeting in a Japanese-themed bar the members of the gang all recount how they entered a life of crime; these vignettes being presented in forms ranging from a puppet show to a movie trailer. Dripping in psychedelic colors and fantastical set pieces, Thick as Thieves is certainly a visual treat. It is like a Saturday Morning Cartoon come to life; there are even wacky and wild car chases straight out of your average Hanna-Barbera show. The actual robbery is presented as a surreal music video of abstract animations and bizarre, sexual drawings, and shots of bees against a black background. It is perhaps one of the most transcendent moments I have seen in a film recently. But the movie really does not work, or maybe it did in 1980s Portugal, but the years have not been kind to this outing; it lacks a tangible human dimension, and there is absolutely nothing to stimulate an emotional connection with these characters. It revels too much in its knee-slapping postmodern antics, but it is intriguing. Much of the humor is also lost in translation, reading the subtitles it is obvious many of the jokes do not translate into English. Thick as Thieves was really made for a domestic, contemporary audience; made a decade after the Carnation Revolution, the satire is aimed at the state of Portuguese society in the eighties (in one scene, a campaign poster for then-President António Ramalho Eanes winks at the camera). Still, there is enough silliness to go around, but this one has not aged well.