Steal Big, Steal Little
Overlong attempt at comedy. Andy Garcia plays the good Ruben and the evil Robby, the
twin adopted sons of a wealthy landowning couple in California. When their parents are
dead, Ruben is the recipient of the family fortune and their 40,000 acre ranch. Robby gets
nothing...so naturally he tries every evil trick in the book to get the land and money away
from Ruben. The movie does a good job with the twin special effects, but it revels in it a
bit much, with some scenes seemingly placed simply to wow the audience with the complexity
of the shots. However, with a running time of over two hours, something needed to be
trimmed from this film. Perhaps if the editors scrapped one of the numerous plots and
counterplots from Robby and Ruben, or if they got rid of the convoluted narrative within a
narrative construction of the tale and simply told the main story the film would seem more
taut. As it is, the dragging plot nearly beats the viewer senseless with its redundancy.
Andy Garcia gives rather unimpressive performances in either of his roles. Alan Arkin gives
the film its few true laughs as a con man turned trusted friend of Ruben.
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