In case you missed the memo, we’re currently living in the great age of the anti-hero. From Tony Soprano to Walter White to Alejandro Toledo, ours is an era of sympathetic bad guys moving through a world where the lines between good and evil are increasingly blurry. Of course, we mention Alejandro Toledo because some of you may have seen Lionsgate’s 2007 Spanish-language hit Ladrón que roba a ladrón, which brought together a multinational Latin American cast for a classic American crime caper involving an unscrupulous infomercial guru.
If you haven’t seen it, now would be a good time, because Pantelion Films, Lionsgate’s Latino lovechild with Univisión, is releasing a sequel entitled Ladrones that will bring together the film’s original criminal duo played by Fernando Colunga and Miguel Varoni, along with some big-name additions. Following in the same vein as its predecessor, Ladrones is a Robin Hood story that involves a handful of Latino criminals who recruit a ragtag band of helpers to save a small American town from a ruthless family of crooks – and make it out with the heist of their lives.
For Ladrones, the Colombian-Argentine Varoni steps back from his co-star duties and instead introduces Colunga’s Alejandro Toledo to a skilled but goofy professional criminal named Santiago Guzmán (played by Mexican Eduardo Yáñez) to help out with his latest scheme. From there, the formula follows the basic plot of Ladrón que roba a ladrón with little deviation, and lays everything out with the same slick-but-low-budget commercial aesthetic. The trailer definitely elicits a few chuckles, but we’ll have to see if some well-timed gags will be enough to save this one from the same fate as Ocean’s Thirteen.
Ladrones opens in theaters on October 9, 2015.