Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Bandidos’ On Netflix, Where A Quirky Group Of Thieves Improvise A Plan To Steal Mayan Treasure

As we’ve said before, heist shows are fairly dependent on the characters who are planning and executing the heist and whether the audience is going to want to spend time with them. In the case of Bandidos, writer Pablo Tébar has created a pretty likable team of unrepentant criminals.

BANDIDOS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A door opens, and a woman walks out, stroking the head of her tiny dog, which is in her bag. She’s followed by a group of men. “What sort of people should the best team of thieves have in order to be infallible?” says a voice.

The Gist: The voice belongs to Miguel (Alfonso Dosal), whose ragtag team consists of Lilí (Ester Expósito), a con artist; Wilson (Juan Pablo Medina), a forger; and Lucas (Juan Pablo Fuentes), a teenage gamer-turned-hacker. “We are the perfect bandits,” he proclaims. “What could possibly go wrong?”

Five days earlier, at a resort on the Yucatan peninsula, Miguel is driven to work by his Uncle Wilson, who has retired from his con artist career to give tours of the region. At the pool, Miguel sees Lilí, an old flame whom he used to pull scams with. She’s there to find wealthy men to try to seduce and steal from. Every person Miguel identifies is dismissed by Lilí because she notices things Miguel doesn’t.

That night at the bar, Miguel meets and gets drunk with a Spanish treasure hunter who knew about Miguel’s father Juan (Bruno Bichir), a well-known archaeologist/treasure hunter. The Spaniard is in Mexico to find the treasure of Aj Took, which his great grandfather, another noted treasure hunter, talked to him about. As the two of them drunkenly go back to the Spaniard’s room at the resort, Miguel finds out that he has the map to the treasure tattooed on his stomach.

The next morning, Miguel wakes up in the Spaniard’s room but the man is gone. Luckily, he took pictures of the map, and knows that the iconography on it is accurate. He definitely thinks that if he can get the right group together, it’ll be a huge score. He tries to convince Wilson, who’s reluctant, and Lilí, who’s heard this song and dance from Miguel before. Lucas, the son of the woman who owns the hotel chain, seems to be in just for the fun of it.

Things become more urgent when he goes to visit his father, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and lives in a memory care facility, and finds out that his father’s savings are tapped out and he owes the facility money.

One thing he does know: The map that’s been tattooed on the Spaniard isn’t complete, but he knows where a more detailed map is. It’s in a new museum of Yucatan antiquities opened by Ariel Tavitan (Andres Baida), a protege of his father’s. He spies an invite to the opening party in his father’s stuff and knows he can use it to get him and his team inside to find the map.

He manages to get Wilson on board, but the only way he can get Lilí on the team is to bail her out of jail (with Lucas’ money). Of course, she has to get caught in the act of scamming a rich guy first. Once he’s able to get that accomplished, he tells the team about his plan to get the map.

In the meantime, the Spaniard is found dead, the area of his stomach where the map tattoo was has been cut out. One of the police detectives on the case, Inés (Mabel Cadena), seems to be taking the case more seriously than her boss, who takes a Rolex off the body and doesn’t even use gloves when they go to inspect his hotel room.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Bandidos is more or less similar to most of the heist shows put out in the last few years, like Baby Bandito, Berlin, Everybody Loves Diamonds, etc.

Our Take: What we like about the Bandidos’ story is that Miguel is so confident in his ability to hatch a complicated plan that it’s funny when he and the team slip up, leaving them to improvise and figure out how to get out of the jam they put themselves in. At some point, the team will grow to include Octavio (Nicolás Furtado), whom we don’t see in the first episode, and Citlali (Andrea Chaparro), whom we see stealing Miguel’s phone, diving off a bridge and swimming underwater for a long time, impressing both Miguel and Wilson in the process.

Will there be any insights into these characters beyond what they have done in the past to score ill-gotten gains? Probably not. But if the characters are fun and the heist they plan has all sorts of twists and turns, Bandidos should be a fun, light watch.

Sex and Skin: When Lilí ties up and blindfolds a rich guy to scam him, she puts honey on the man’s belly and lets her dog lick it off while she clones the man’s credit card.

Parting Shot: Miguel thinks he has pulled off the part of his plan where he gets pictures of the more detailed map at Ariel’s museum. Then he takes a step and an alarm goes off.

Sleeper Star: We want to see as much of Lilí’s dog Clinton as possible.

Most Pilot-y Line: There’s a scene where Miguel tries to scam some American tourists by unearthing an “artifact” that turns out to be a fake. The scene itself is fine, and it speaks to how he may have gotten some quick money in the past, but if it was lifted out it probably wouldn’t have changed the narrative of the show at all.

Our Call: STREAM IT. With likable characters and an interesting target at the center of the show’s heist story, Bandidos is the kind of show that you can breezily watch and enjoy between more serious shows, even if you don’t remember much about it after you’re done watching.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.