THE BLACK BART OF TACO KING 17 | Omeleto

A thief seeks a partner. Hart is a hustler and criminal on the lookout for a new partner. He goes to a dive bar but can't rustle up anyone up to the job until he spots Lia stealing the wallet off a macho flirt. Hart follows her, convincing her to go to dinner with him. Lia accepts, fearful he'll turn her in. At dinner, he convinces a skeptical Lia to join up with him, starting with robbing the restaurant they're in. Lia agrees, negotiating a 60-40 split, Hart's watch and more jobs with bigger pay. After Hart leaves, she executes the plan they come up with -- but in a way that is true to herself. Directed and written by Rickey Larke, this short thriller-drama is a darkly entertaining, slick and intelligent take on the crime genre, taking us inside the engine of a small-time operation. Blending stylish visuals, sharp humor and clever plotting and pacing, it is a fun addition to the canon of fun, sleekly executed heist films, adding its own element of sly, subversive social observation to the mix. We start the film with some history, with some old footage of a courteous "gentleman thief" in the late 1800s who went by the name of Black Bart, who often left poems at his crime scenes. Then we segue into meeting Hart, making his shark-like way through a seedy dive bar, on the lookout for a new partner in petty crime. But Hart isn't the only main character of the film; he shares the split screen with Lia, the bartender fending off drunken flirts. The music is jaunty old-school country; the split screen is an equally enjoyable retro callback; and Hart clocks Lia's ability to rob a persistent flirt of his wallet. She's exactly what he's looking for -- a partner to help him execute his schemes. He finagles a dinner with her, and at the meal, he's smooth-talking, clever and knowledgeable. Lia is self-possessed, straight-talking and clear about what she wants. Played by actors Christopher Dietrick and Jasmine Mathews, Hart and Lia are evenly matched in terms of cleverness and their back-and-forth shifts gracefully from adversarial to begrudging to cautious agreement. Hart gives her the hard sell, promising that if she listens to him, he can make her rich. As he lays down their plan for robbing the restaurant they're in, Lia seems skeptical but goes along with it, though she objects to the implied violence. And as it turns out, she has her own way of doing things. The clever fun of heist films is they often invite double takes and rewatches of narratives, with twists inviting us to review what we've just seen to look for clues or to fill in blanks. THE BLACK BART OF TACO KING 17 keeps this tradition, but upon rewatching, it cleverly plants clues in the social dynamics between Hart and Lia, where he casually assumes he's the leader and brains of the operation and not treating Lia like a real partner. The film's final twist is rooted in character, as Lia takes stealthy ownership of the operation and does things her own way -- one that refuses to subscribe to the subservient script she's given, and makes it up for herself. THE BLACK BART OF TACO KING 17. Courtesy of Rickey Larke at http://instagram.com/tacokingxvii.