To steal from a thief (4 Stars)

The original title of this 2016 Spanish film is "A hundred years of pardon". The English title seemed unconnected at first, until I read that there's a Spanish proverb:

"Whoever steals from a thief will be pardoned for 100 years".

Ah ha! So the Spanish title uses the second half of the proverb, while the English title uses the first half.

The film starts out as a typical bank robbery. Armed robbers storm a bank in Valencia to steal the contents of safety deposit boxes. They have a perfect plan. They've spent two months digging a tunnel under the bank that leads to a disused underground train station. They divert the police's attention by telling them that they want a getaway car. The police stall, as they always do in situations like this, and the robbers intend to use the delay to escape through the tunnel.

The problem is that it's the biggest rainfall of the year, and the tunnel is flooded.

Still a typical heist film? Not quite. Unknown to the others, the leader of the team has been asked to rob the bank by the Spanish secret service. They can keep everything for themselves, except for the contents of safety deposit box 314, which the secret service wants. It contains evidence about vote rigging in the last election, evidence which could topple the president.

The film develops into a nail-biting thriller. The police chief is a diligent man who wants to capture the thieves while saving the lives of the hostages. The head of the Valencian secret service wants the thieves to go free, regardless of whether the hostages die or not. So it's a political thriller disguised as a heist movie.

I watched the film in Germany, where the film is available on DVD and Blu-ray. It hasn't been released on disc in Britain or America, but it's available on Amazon Prime. There are subplots of the thieves turning against one another. The intrigues were so complicated in the first half hour that I had to rewind the film and start again from the beginning. It was worth it. It's a good film, apart from being overly complicated in parts. It's loosely adapted from a British film called "The Bank Job".