Bank Robbers The Last Great Heist (Los Ladrones: la verdadera historia del robo del siglo) is an Argentinian documentary, released by Netflix on 10 August 2022. The film directed by Matías Gueilburt and produced by Sebastián Gamba and Julian Rousso. Through sit-down interviews, it reveals how the most famous bank robbery in Argentina was carried out.
The documentary film has a runtime of about 1 hour and 50 minutes. Based on the real-life events that happened in 2006, it is said to be the robbery of the century. The perpetrators eventually became the folk hero and maybe even inspiration for many fictional heist films.
Netflix’s synopsis of the film reads:
Through candid interviews, the perpetrators of Argentina’s most notorious bank heist detail how — and why — they carried out the radical 2006 operation.
-Bank Robbers The Last Great Heist Review Contain Some Spoilers-
The documentary starts off with the mastermind of the robbery or the man who started it all, Fernando Araujo. In the year 2003, he was a happy man, who had taken a sabbatical and indulged in his interest in the arts. Like plastic art, martial arts and Cannabis arts. He was writing his own book on the indoor cultivation of Marijuana and making other artistic things.
Until one day he realised, he needs to rob a bank. He calls it the transcendence of death or a change in perception, where he wanted to do something, create art that nobody can think of or replicate. And the conclusion of it was a bank robbery. Some might think that’s pretty odd for anyone to just decide something like this.
But you gotta remember that everyone has at least once, thought that they should just rob a bank. However, such conclusions are entailed by the person’s financial situation etc, where they actually need money and robbing seems easier than earning it over N number of years. And nobody actually acts on it, except some I guess.
Anyway, just like Fernando, the people that helped him in this heist were also ordinary people, living a comfortable life. One was his friend Sebastian, an engineer by profession but operating a jet ski mechanic shop. The other was Luis Mario Vitette, an Uruguayan man who fled to Argentina during his temporary break from prison and joined the thieves gang, robbing rich people.
And the ones who joined later were also people with a crime/stealing history and were called the Doc, The Kid and Beto. Together they all came up with a plan of faking a bank robbery in the front, to create a diversion, but actually stealing the safe deposit boxes in the basement vault, through an underground tunnel.
They worked out their way to the vault through the drainage tunnels and schemed the whole plan, how they would steal and escape from there. And it wasn’t all that easy, they worked for almost 3 years until the plan unfolded in 2006. While the news reports say that they looted 143 safe boxes and took $95 million but it could actually be more.
Honestly, their plan was almost perfect as well, from the start they didn’t want to hurt anyone and they didn’t do anything to all the hostages. Didn’t leave any clues behind that would give away their identity and knew when to go away, without falling into their greed. If only they weren’t exposed by the wife of one of the members, who was also part of the plan.
But her greed brought everyone down. They might have remained legendary robbers who evaporated into thin air after robbing (or the ones who escaped from the drain tunnel). Everyone involved was tried and ended up sentenced to prison terms. Sentences were eventually reduced and they are now at large, thus starring in their own documentary.
But why they decided to rob a bank could have many reasons like, Argentines are uniquely distrustful of their banks and for good reason. They feel betrayed by them. Most famously in 2001, when the collapse of the national banking system, known as the corralito, erased entire fortunes and affected millions of people.
Summing Up: Bank Robbers The Last Great Heist
The documentary (Los Ladrones: la verdadera historia del robo del siglo) is an interesting watch, especially when we are getting the first-hand account of the perpetrators themselves. How truthful are they about their motivations for robbery is questionable, but for Fernando, I can definitely say that he wanted to be famous and known by all.
Either discretely or now that he has been exposed, he is enjoying the attention he gets and likewise others do it too. Looking at the recent true-crime documentaries, they seem to be the nicest criminals who succeeded in robbing a bank with plastic guns.
Bank Robbers The Last Great Heist is streaming on Netflix.
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