A wink and a nod to U.S. Latino life

"Ladron que Roba a ladron" is a long overdue Hollywood overture to America's Latino immigrant community. While there have been movies aimed at that audience, they're plainly calculated as movies for the naturalized, the assimilated, Spanglish speakers.

"Ladron," a caper comedy, is not. It's in Spanish with English subtitles. It is defiantly anti-Anglo, anti-Immigration and Naturalization Service. It panders to people who might not want too much attention paid to how they got into the United States. It is Hollywood slick, well-acted with great production values.

And it's funny.

The title is part of a Latin American proverb that translates as "A thief who steals from a thief will receive 100 years of forgiveness." That's what veteran crooks Emilio (Miguel Varoni) and Alejandro (Fernando Colunga) are after. Alejandro has summoned Emilio from Colombia to take down a man who has gotten rich making infomercials for bogus products ("Water of God," a cure-all, is his best-seller) in between Spanish-language soap operas (telenovelas) for the poor-and-gullible corner of the Latino market.

And even though the duo have a code — "we never steal from our own" — they're going to make an exception for Moctezuma Valdez (Saúl Lizaso). They plot a heist and recruit their team.

It's not clever enough to make you forget "Heist," "The Italian Job" or "Ocean's Eleven," "Twelve" or "Thirteen." But it's cute even if it isn't as intricate as those, and even if it does pander to an "us" who always steal from "them."