MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Steal Big’ an Ambitious Tale of Immigrant Twins : Movie review: Andy Garcia has dual role in film that aims for drama, whimsy but sometimes trips in transitions.

The movie has not been made that would benefit from a laugh track, but given the obnoxiously loud music laid over Andrew Davis’ “Steal Big, Steal Little” to achieve the same results, this might have been the time.

You speculate about filmmakers’ choices at your own risk, but William Olvis’ alternately saccharine and jaunty score feels like a post-production bailout, an attempt to make up in music what was missing in the script and on the set and only discovered in the editing.

Music is always there to assist the story, but here, it’s a search-and-rescue mission. There is plenty to mask in “Steal Big,” a fable about brotherhood, opportunity and American justice.

It’s the story of immigrant Mexican twins Ruben and Robert Martinez (Andy Garcia, doubled) who are found abandoned in a ditch by wealthy Santa Barbara ranchers and raised, though by different parents, as heirs to the kingdom. It is essentially a good-twin/bad-twin story. Ruben is raised by the ranch’s saintly matron, a boss woman who treats her illegal immigrants as family, and Robert by her greedy, mean-spirited ex-husband.

Their story is told, in confusing layers of flashbacks, as a news feature in progress, with Ruben, his wife Laura (Rachel Ticotin), and their animated pal Lou (Alan Arkin, in his best comic performance in a decade) telling an interviewer how Ruben inherited the ranch and then had to fight his brother and his circle of corrupt cops, judges and businessmen to keep it.

Garcia is a bit too viewer-friendly an actor to portray truly menacing figures, and he is never convincing as the evil twin. But he is a perfect fit for Ruben, whose big heart and blind allegiances make him easy prey for his brother, his opportunistic lawyer (Joe Pantoliano) and the various government agencies sent to harass him.

“Steal Big’s” broad, little-people-vs.-big-people setup aims for a sense of magic realism, and often succeeds. The depiction of immigrant ranch hands as a flock of hard-working angels under the protective wing of the soulful Ruben is more than a little patronizing. And the film’s politics--Ruben preaches pure collectivism--will cause palpitations in affluent Montecito, which lent its lush landscapes and estates to the cause.

But it is a warm and fuzzy group following Ruben and the wily Lou into battle against the forces who would carve La Fortuna’s 40,000 acres into housing tracts. Andrew Davis, who first worked as a cinematographer, has proved himself a fine stylist with a series of action movies (no small feat, he made both Chuck Norris and Steven Seagal look good) and with the superbly directed blockbuster in 1993, “The Fugitive.”

“Steal Big” is his first major movie, however, in which he was intimately involved in the creation of the story, and in which character development is more important than events, and there’s the problem. “Steal Big” stumbles all over the place, attempting to strike a tone that allows for great romantic highs, fraternal melodrama, whimsy and slapstick and going over a shuddering speed bump with every transition.

The movie gets so silly at times, you feel like throwing a tomato at it. Olvis’ score leaves no question as to how each scene is meant to play. But music, no more than a laugh track, can’t make you feel it.

* MPAA rating: PG-13, for a scene of marijuana use . Times guidelines: Sexual humor, some profanity.

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‘Steal Big, Steal Little’

Andy Garcia: Ruben Partida Martinez/Robert Martin

Alan Arkin: Lou Perilli

Rachel Ticotin: Laura Martinez

Joe Pantoliano: Eddie Agopian

Holland Taylor: Mona Rowland-Downey

A Chicago Pacific Entertainment production, released by Savoy Pictures. Director Andrew Davis. Producers Andrew Davis, Fred Caruso. Screenplay by Davis, Lee Blessing, Jeanne Blake, Terry Kahn. Cinematographer Frank Tidy. Editor Don Brochu, Tina Hirsch. Costumes Jodie Tillen. Music William Olvis. Production design Michael Haller. Art director Mark E. Zuelzke. Set designer Gene Serdena. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.

* In general release throughout Southern California.