The Art of Stealing (2008)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

The first must-see film of the year.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

The art of stealing is a watchable film I spent the whole film trying to discover where it was made -I only knew something about "argentinia" from the plot line.The plot is not predictable like American action films -except for 3 minutes of the "happy ending"Decent script & acting: Bravo Portugal!Great music and soundtrack. End title song is brilliant (someone please post the name of that band and the name of the track because they are great!)Good work -best of luck to the filmmakers in the future!

This new film of the director Leonel Vieira is clearly inspired in Tarantino's cinematographic universe, like it was a kind of tribute to that great American director. In a recent TV interview Leonel Vieira admitted that he always was fascinated by Tarantino's films and all the ambiance which surround them, but it's not easy for a Portuguese director to do that kind of cinema. And in this film we understand why it's not easy to do such kind of cinema in Portugal! In fact, in this film, we notice a true effort to create a plot, scenarios, characters, lines and jokes close to the ones done by Tarantino, but then it stills missing something... It misses well done action scenes, it misses actors capable of doing such kind of characters (exceptions made just to Nicolau Breyner and Ivo Canelas - I'm reporting just to the Portuguese actors which are the ones I know better), it misses money for the special effects, well, it misses many things! But this attempt of Leonel Vieira to do something different in the Portuguese cinema scene is something to be praised I must say! I think this movie is valuable because of that, because it tries to be something different from the "common" Portuguese cinema.On the other hand I think it was totally unnecessary to put some well know Portuguese TV actors in secondary roles which add nothing to the movie. In fact they make it lose some credibility because they don't fit in a film like this. I mean, will the Portuguese viewer (an important target of this film I suppose...) give some credibility to actors like Marco Horácio, Óscar Branco, Joaquim Nicolau, Aldo Lima, Pedro Tochas or even non-actors like Olavo Bilac in a film like this?!! The English language is a valid option, but it creates some flaws in the film as well.Well, it's entertaining and funny, at parts, but it values essentially for the risk of making a production like this in our country.