A life of crime catches up with you anywhere.
Even at an off-the-grid chili farm,
in Baja California
Chiles
"El Guerito"
Jack
Bobby
Conchita
INSIDE JOB
Synopsis
The LA jewelry store should have been an easy job. In-and-out, no violence. But LITTLE JOE killed a guard. BOBBY was driving so he got away, but that left JACK stranded. Little Joe went to jail for murder. Jack was made at the scene, but vanished to Mexico where he went to ground, literally, growing chilies on a dried up farm in Baja. He got a native wife and a six-year old daughter, beautiful like her mom. They might have been happy if their farm wasn’t drying up right under their feet, like their hopes the day Bobby showed up.
Bobby and Jack go way back, all the way to a violent California prison, over fifteen years ago, when Jack took the younger Bobby under his wing and kept the hardened criminals from eating him alive. If it weren’t for that, Jack would probably have killed him when Bobby showed his face at the farm. But Bobby is Bobby and Bobby has a proposition, a sure thing, as usual, no guns, no problems. The whole gate of a soccer match at The Los Angeles Coliseum - close to two million.
A fly-by-night promoter named SARMIENTO who does the whole thing in cash is the mark. A lazy accountant with an aversion for the IRS is his bag-man. With Jack’s safe-cracking ability it would be an easy in-and-out. Bobby knows all the angles, he works with these guys. They treat him with contempt, he’s only half “latino” and a lowly gofer for them, and they’d never suspect he was a threat. That’s believable enough... Jack wants to think about it.
A few days later, in his '59 Thunderbird, Jack arrives in L.A., a warrant for his arrest still outstanding. He’s not happy being here. In-and-out, he reminds Bobby. One false move and he’s gone.
What Jack doesn’t know: Little Joe is out of prison. This is his gig and Little Joe’s ultimate plans don’t include Jack. Bobby, scared to death of Little Joe, hopes he can finesse the situation so neither he or Jack get hurt, but finesse is not Bobby’s long suit. If he has to sell Jack down the river to survive, he will.
What Bobby doesn’t know: Sarmiento’s accountant is not so lazy after all. He’s been seduced by CONCHITA, a Cuban beauty with her own designs on the money. She has the accountant dreaming dreams of idyllic days on a sunny beach in the Caribbean, Conchita at his side. Dream on… This will be her ticket out of her life of drugs and high-end prostitution.
The night of the game, Jack follows the accountant and the money, and surprises Conchita just as she’s leaving her horny mark handcuffed to a bed. Everybody’s game comes apart at the seams. Bobby’s promise of “no guns” turns out to be just as good as any of Bobby’s promises. The accountant ends up dead, Jack ends up wounded and forces Conchita to carry the money as they leave the scene. She obliges: she has no intention of taking her eyes off that suitcase.
Jack goes to ground at Bobby’s apartment where a surprise encounter with Little Joe clues him to Bobby’s duplicity and betrayal. A struggle ensues and Little Joe has a surprise encounter of his own, between his head and the edge of the porcelain tub. His body hasn’t cooled when Bobby shows up, but before he and Jack can work out their “differences,” Sarmiento and his crew arrive, a little more than curious about their missing money. Jack, Conchita and Bobby must take it on the lam together, a rather tense and unlikely trio of allies.
Pursued by Sarmiento and by MUÑECO, Sarmiento’s man-of-trust and Conchita’s secret partner in crime, our troika weaves a tortuous path through the Mexican countryside and through their own shifting loyalties as they each angle for success and survival. Eventually, Bobby manages to get away with the suitcase that he believes holds the money, once again stranding Jack and this time, Conchita as well. But things never go that easily for Bobby and the money isn’t where he thinks it is. And ultimately, not where Jack thinks it is either.
As the pursuing antagonists variously bite the dust, Jack and Bobby are once again left to confront each other and this time, it’s final and fatal, the irony being that the money over which they’ve fought is long gone, well on its way to disappearing in New York City, in Conchita’s care. But it was never really about money between Bobby and Jack and in the end, Bobby’s own inability to trust or be trusted, is his own undoing.
Jack ends up where he should have stayed. And Conchita, well…one day a customer shows up at the spiffy new nail salon she runs in Spanish Harlem and he’s not looking for the latest in manicures.
His name is Sarmiento…
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