Heist too sweet for a crime drama
The show: Dirty Money, Season 1, Episode 5 The moment: The dinosaurs At the 30-minute mark, this hourlong documentary about the Quebec maple syrup heist of 2012 takes an odd turn. An attorney explains that Le Madrid is a gas station off Hwy. 20 in Quebec.
It boasts a play area with large plastic dinosaurs.
“In June 2011,” the attorney says, “a meeting occurred between Avik Caron (one of the crooks, with alleged Mafia ties), Sébastien Jutras (who drove the trucks loaded with stolen syrup) and Richard Vallières (who sold the syrup).”
Here’s the oddity: as the lawyer says each name, director Brian McGinn ( Chef’s Table) cuts to closeups of the dinosaurs’ faces, a tan dinosaur for Caron; a swirly blue dino for Jutras; a squat dino for Vallières. A few minutes later, we see text messages from the three that show their increasing anxiety. But the texts are not typed next to the men’s photos. They’re typed next to their dinosaurs.
As an idea, the maple syrup heist — 9,561 barrels worth $18 million, stolen from the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers and sold illegally — riveted the world. But as a crime drama, it’s a tad anticlimactic. Jutras signed his name on a rental form for a forklift. The cops nabbed him. He named the others. They were arrested, jailed and socked with huge fines. Order and good government in action.
I haven’t yet watched the other five segments in this series, but I imagine that their stories of Big Pharma and cartel banks are less straightforward. I suspect that McGinn used the dinos to make merry with Canadian straitlacedness. Our money may be sticky — maple syrup is a half-billion-dollar business in Quebec alone — but it’s still mostly sweet. Dirty Money streams on Netflix. Johanna Schneller is a media connoisseur who zeroes in on pop-culture moments. She usually appears Tuesday and Thursday.