Moran robs the bank where he works, gives the money to unwitting Roman. Laura Paredes arrives to investigate, makes life hell for the remaining bankers. When Roman can’t take the pressure, he’s told to drop off the money on a mountainside, where he meets and falls for Norma – and flashbacks reveal that Moran had previously fallen for the same woman in the same spot.

Only three hours long – I think the reason it’s divided into two parts is that Laura Paredes only appears in multi-part features. Suspicious dialogue about mysterious flowers.

Michael Sicinski in Cinema Scope:

Broken into two acts, with a cast of characters whose names are obviously anagrams of each other, The Delinquents is forward with its gamesmanship, and if the eventual resolution of its central conflict seems unsatisfying, that may be precisely the point … At one point Román ducks into a Buenos Aires arthouse and catches a few minutes of Bresson’s L’Argent, a sign that Moreno is more than happy to lay his cards on the table, allowing the viewer to infer a game of three-card monty where there actually is none.

Ehrlich called it “arguably the first slow cinema heist movie.” Jenkins calls their employer “the absolute worst bank in the world.” Cronk says it jumps off “from the central premise of Hugo Fregonese’s Hardly a Criminal (1949) — a touchstone of Argentine film noir that many cinephiles of Moreno’s generation grew up watching on television.”

Rizov: “It’s no coincidence that the bank vault and the prison Morán ends up have their hallways laid out in the same way, a rhyme that’s brought home by the same actor (Germán De Silva) playing both Morán’s boss and a prisoner who extorts money for protection.” Moreno: “At the end of the day, what I wanted to make was a fable. I had no obligation to reality — my debt was to cinema. So I said, “Let’s do it, let’s play this game. Here’s an actor playing two roles.”