I’m Sorry, But I Don’t Get ‘Den of Thieves’

When I finally watched Den of Thieves at the tail end of 2020, I remember feeling like I was finally about to fill in an embarrassing, nearly three-year blind spot. Heist movies are a top-five subgenre, and they’re hard to get right; the ravings that Gerard Butler had cracked the code in the latest installment of his impressive run of Hungry Man dinner action B-movies made this one sound like a layup. And yet, even with my expectations properly calibrated and contextualized, I ended the film with a shrug. (I looked up my Letterboxd review on the occasion of writing this column: “Like an 11th grader watched Heat and immediately downloaded Final Draft”—three stars.)

I know it’s supposed to be loud, and dumb, and cliche, but winkingly so—but the tenor among my writer peers (and other people whose taste I generally tend to find agreeable) was that it leaned into the loud dumb cliché of at all with such panache that it almost became subversive. It didn’t have that effect on me: great heist, Peak Gerry, cool shootouts and not much more. As a self-proclaimed smart person, maybe I didn’t need Heat that dumbed down. (Is Heat even that highbrow? It has one of cinema’s all-time great heists, all-time great shootouts, and Pacino in full ham mode screaming about big asses—when people make this analogy, you’d think they were talking about an Oscar-bait treatise that skimps on action and requires a lot of patience.)

I say all that to say: I went into the long-awaited Den of Thieves sequel, Pantera, with as much anticipation, because it could finally be free of the baggage that comes with that comparison. (I haven’t actually opened my copy of Meg Gardiner and Michael Mann’s novel-as-movie-pitch Heat 2—for all I know, it actually does involve Pacino following Val Kilmer to Europe to join him in a diamond heist.) In the seven years since the original, Den has, deservedly or not, become a full-on cult movie. A new adventure from writer-director Christian Gudegast, with Butler returning as scuzzy sheriff Big Nick alongside O’Shea Jackson Jr. (as Donnie, the unassuming master thief who outwitted him in the first film), all aiming to live-up to the appeal of the first and use that goodwill to get even nuttier? Man, that sounded like a layup. It sounded like the perfect January movie to ever exist, perhaps. And the early word-of-mouth supported that, with talk of “Gerard unleashed” and an all-time fantastic “heist sequence.”

Well, guys, I’m once again on the outside feeling lost, because Pantera is even more mid than the first, a largely dull and lifeless movie devoid of characters or plot interesting enough to validate its—gasp—144-minute runtime. The first rule of Heat for Bros should be that it shouldn't be nearly as long as Heat. (Speaking of De Niro, this actually just made me want to rewatch Ronin, a guns-blazing heist movie also set in Paris with a nonsensical plot but immaculate who-cares vibes.)

The worst thing I can say about these movies—or the best way to express my frustration with them—is that if I landed on one of them while channel-surfing past, like, TNT, I would not stop. But as with the OG, it’s not that Pantera is outright bad or simply doesn’t work. It’s more complicated than that. In the same way that Gerard may have unlocked the final, perfect evolution of the ideal Butler Hero with Big Nick in the first film, Pantera somehow simultaneously succeeds and fails at the odd-couple chemistry it’s shooting for between Nick and Donnie. I’m not sure what Ice Jr., normally a very solid actor, is going for, but Donnie is one of the most boring master thieves to ever grace the genre, and the lack of chemistry between Jackson and Butler is enough to make you long for the nearly homoerotic sparks that flew in the first film between Butler and Pablo Schreiber—foils who were so cosmically linked they became Eskimo Bros before all was said and done (a detail that gets a needless callback early in Pantera).

The best we get from Nick and Donnie is trading origin stories over shawarma. And yet, that scene is pretty fun. The same goes for the dynamic duo throwing wisecracks at each other as they are made to swim miles back to shore by ornery old-world mafia types. But these scenes toe the line between crackling with organic chemistry and feeling woefully forced, a feeling that oscillates sometimes by the line. And beyond that—what else is there to grasp onto here? They aren’t surrounded by a compelling cast of archetypal but colorful characters. The build-up to the heist is staid. There’s no zippy fake-identity building or setting several pieces in motion as dominos to knock down when it’s go-time. No real obstacles to overcome to get the pieces in motion. No super discerning authority figures who need to be outwitted. Even the mafia guys floating on the horizon as the supposed unpredictable third-party are kind of the most benign old mob dudes ever. There is nothing in here to keep you awake until the heist, give or take Gerard doing hash in the club. Gudegast knows his way around an actual heist sequence, sure, but he directs the rest of the film so flatly, there’s never any real tension or pulse.

And this heist—I don’t know man, it nearly put me back to sleep. It’s nowhere near as intricate as the one in the first film, and mostly just devolves into the gang angrily sifting through random safety deposit boxes. It never really feels that grand, especially given the setting. We’re watching the World Diamond Center get knocked off, give me a little pizzazz! The escape is pretty sick (is that technically considered part of the heist sequence? Because if so then I understand the hype a bit more) right up until a goofy deus-ex-Mafia moment that involves a couple of guys standing around the right random spot in the mountains at the right time.

The twist pissed me off, even if it felt genuine. The ending makes the twist less annoying, even as it positions the series to go full Fast & Furious. I groaned, but I grinned. These movies are two for two on wasting my time, and not validating the buzz or living up to their full genre potential. At the same time, if anyone could beat Vin Diesel to bringing the F&F series down from outer space and back onto the streets with something more grounded and gritty, it’s Big Gerard. Bring on Thieves Three—I’ll keep trying as long as they keep making them.