When it comes to juvenile delinquency, first comes restlessness, then violence, and then death. These phases also serve as the three-act structure (taken from Tomás Salvador’s novel) utilized in Francisco Rovira Beleta’s Los Atracadores (US: The Robbers), one of the more sophisticated entries in the series of youthful nihilism films that ushered in the 1960’s around the world. Set in Barcelona, where the famously unfinished (construction started in 1892) Sagrada Familia basilica towers in the background like a watchful, impatient God, the film follows a trio of restless hooligans who hail from three distinct backgrounds and will suffer three distinct fates. Comprising law student and son of a wealthy real estate family Vidal aka “El Señorito” (Pierre Brice), factory worker and amateur soccer player Ramón aka “Chico” (Manuel Gil), and off-and-on homeless reject Carmelo aka “Compadre”(Julián Mateos), the gang progresses from beating up strangers (in the novel, especially homosexuals) to robbing pharmacies to accidental homicide to intentional homicide. Some viewers may crave more plot, but tension rises steadily, and the net of doom pulls tighter as the film proceeds. Combining late noir with elements of neorealism and even a smidgen of French New Wave, the film is both poetic and documentarian (complete with voiceover), a not-so-subtle criticism of the Spanish social order and economic state, but also a canvas for cinematic stylization (location shooting, deep focus, underwater angles, panning and zooming).