When Den of Thieves originally released back in 2018, I jokingly started calling it “my favourite movie I hadn’t watched yet.” When I did eventually watch the film years later, I was glad that my joke ended up being accurate. The original film is essentially Heat after a week-long bender, a grimy cops-and-robbers tale steeped in so much machismo, you could probably cook a steak just by putting it in front of the screen. It knowingly revelled in scumbaggery from both sides of the law, and I absolutely loved it. That’s why it hurts me to say that while I did have some fun with Den of Thieves 2, it feels like a noticeable step down from its predecessor.
Taking place a few years after the first film, Donnie Walker (O’Shea Jackson), the true mastermind behind the first film’s heist, has relocated to Europe. He’s joined up with a new crew called the Panthers in order to rob the World Diamond Centre in Antwerp, with the score worth over 800 million Euros in cash and jewels.
As he prepares for the heist, Donnie is suddenly haunted by a ghost of his past: disgraced detective “Big Nick” O’Brien (Gerard Butler) who, on top of dealing with a divorce, is still reeling from being outplayed by Donnie and has finally tracked him down. However, rather than arrest and extradite him, Nick forces Donnie to cut him in on the heist instead; setting up a tenuous alliance that could either make them rich, or get them locked up for good.
With the new European setting, everything is more sleek and professional; which means the film lacks a lot of the grit that made the first movie work in the first place. Even Big Nick himself feels restrained this time around. While I admire writer/director Christian Gudegast wanting to add a bit of nuance to Big Nick as a character, he doesn’t feel like the one-man hurricane he was in the past, to the film’s detriment. Butler still manages to bring glimmers of the lovable scumbag (particularly a scene where he gets wasted at a club with the team), but there’s no moment like him eating donuts off the floor of a crime scene in the original.
At most, he antagonizes a pair of French cops on how to pronounce “croissant”. O’Shea Jackson, Jr., on the other hand, is having a lot of fun, and the moments where he sports a hilariously unconvincing French accent while casing the joint had me laughing harder than most. The rest of the cast, however, are as bland as they come.
“…while I did have some fun with Den of Thieves 2, it feels like a noticeable step down from its predecessor.”
Evin Ahmad as team leader Jovanna is the only new character with any semblance of a personality, as the other members of the crew (played by Salvatore Esposito and Orli Shuka) aren’t given much beyond a few threatening lines, looking cool and participating in the heist itself. It’s disappointing considering how captivating those actors are in other works, especially Shuka on the underrated Gangs of London series.
Despite a nearly 2-and-a-half hour long runtime, it still felt like some major character development was left on the cutting room floor. Nick and Donnie get buddy-buddy with each other a bit too suddenly, mainly after getting entangled with the mafia halfway through the movie. While the underlying tension of “which one is going to screw over the other” is ever-present, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a crucial scene or 2 that come out on a home video/VOD release.
As for the big heist, it takes a very, VERY long time to get there, but it thankfully lives up to the long build-up. It’s a very intense sequence as the team finds some genuinely inspired ways to bypass a truly impenetrable security system, sneaking their way across hundreds of cameras. The same especially goes for a late-film car chase/shootout that had me on the edge of my seat. Gudegast is a great action director, which makes it also frustrating that there isn’t enough of it here.
It’s a genuine bummer that I’m not over the moon by Den of Thieves 2: Pantera like I hoped. There is enough fun to be had in the film for action fans to check out, but anyone hoping for scumbaggery on the level of the first film will be sorely disappointed. That being said, if a third movie ever gets announced, I’ll still be the first in line.
