Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Great Robbery of Brazil’s Central Bank’ on Netflix, a True Crime Documentary Series About a Staggering Mega-Heist

If you haven’t had your fill of true crime yet, three-part Netflix series The Great Robbery of Brazil’s Central Bank offers a slight variation on the formula. It foregoes the usual murder/serial killer saga for what has to be one of the biggest bank robberies of all time: The heist of 160 million Brazilian reais (roughly $31 million) from a vault in Fortaleza. And as you’re about to learn, that’s much, much more than just a snatch-and-run job.

THE GREAT ROBBERY OF BRAZIL’S CENTRAL BANK: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Slow zoom down a hole to a tunnel that stretches 80 yards from a rental property to the main Central Bank vault.

The Gist: They call it “the heist of the century,” even though it occurred in 2005 and there’s so much century left. A couple dozen ne’er-do-wells carved through the earth and made off with so much cash, in total, it weighed 3.5 metric tons. This was a time in Brazil’s history when bank robbers, not drug lords, were the high popes of the criminal underground. We get some teaser footage in which commentators say everyone on the street knew who the perps were, even though the cops didn’t, and a blurry glimpse of one of those very perps, who actually agreed to be interviewed, his face and voice distorted for anonymity’s sake. Juicy!

Through the usual re-enactments, talking heads and archival news footage, the series pieces together the events. The robbers put up a phony storefront for a grass company in the rental space so passersby wouldn’t look at them too funny if they were seen hauling bags of dirt. After a while, it was too suspicious, so they just added the dirt to the backyard and stacked the bags to the ceiling. Nobody was the wiser – not even bank management, who were none the wiser as the bad guys cut a hole in their pocket and collected what fell out. And A LOT fell out. Hey good job there numbnuts.

Fun stuff I learned watching this first episode: To make the tunnel cozy while they worked, robbers installed electrical lines for lights and fans, and even a phone line so they could call each other down there and whisper sweet nothings and then say “You hang up,” “No, YOU hang up.” The Central Bank vault is like a warehouse full of cash, and workers use a forklift to move around gigantic cases full of money. Signifiers of bank management’s arrogance: The vault security system had some blind spots (perhaps that goes without saying); they also were warned by the feds that stuff like this was happening elsewhere, and they just blew it off. Journalists, cops, researchers and the like tell the story; you know the drill, I assume.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? This is like Money Heist: The Documentary. (Also, the surprising willing participation of people who are guilty of the very crime being profiled reminds me of the extraordinary 2015 documentary film Cartel Land.)

Our Take: Here’s the main question we face regarding documentaries about modern crimes: Are we better off watching three hours of TV, or just looking up the news stories on the internet? The Great Robbery of Brazil’s Central Bank walks right on that line. The story is compelling – who doesn’t like a real-life Ocean’s 11? – and getting one of the robbers to participate is a major win, although it’s hard not to question his reliability as a narrator. He’s pretty matter-of-fact in tone, doesn’t seem like the boastful type and shares tidbits about the life of a career crook, something that might make for fascinating doc fodder itself. Same goes for the manhunting cop, who waxes eloquently about how much he learns about people by going through their trash.

Yet the series adheres to a generic visual and structural template – tease, get into the nitty-gritty, cliffhang ya for the next episode – rendering it unexceptional. You wonder if three hour-long episodes (of which I watched the first) can’t be pared down to a crisp 100-minute feature. But if you know nothing about this mega-theft, or even the ins and outs of what some dudes actually physically do with 3.5 metric tons of cash, the series will likely keep you watching.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: A federal officer who’s a career manhunter – who also participates anonymously – utters, “That’s when the hunt began.”

Sleeper Star: Anyone with a blurred-out face is automatically disqualified as a “sleeper.” So let’s go with journalist Luiz Henrique Campos, a newspaper guy (gotta love a newspaper guy!) who delivers the nuts and bolts of the story with a little bit of panache.

Most Pilot-y Line: Campos delivers the irresistible cliche: “It was like something out of a movie. Except if it was a movie, you’d call the plot ridiculous.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Great Robbery of Brazil’s Central Bank doesn’t break any new ground in the alleys of true-crime docs, but it offers just enough points of fascination to entice you to see it through to the end.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.