A Surprise That Not Even Donnie Could Have Seen Coming
I did not like the motion picture Den of Thieves. At all.
I do like its sequel, Den of Thieves: Pantera. Quite a bit.
How did we get here?
I’ve been on the outside looking in as the original Den of Thieves steadily evolved from a decently-performing Gerard Butler January programmer with middling reviews into a bonafide cult classic. Many was the B-movie aficionado whom I respect who wrote at length about how Den of Thieves was a new masterpiece, a modern classic of dirt-bag cinema, and the proudly trashy inheritor to the legacy of Michael Mann’s Heat, with that film’s elegance replaced with over-cranked testosterone and a proud layer of sleaze (these are compliments).
With the sequel rapidly approaching, I finally decided to see what all the hype was about and so I plunked down and fired up Den of Thieves.
And I then I sat there for two and a half hours, sort of annoyed, very bored, and then very, very annoyed when Den of Thieves capped off unofficially remaking Heat by also adding in the heist from Inside Man followed by the twist from The Usual Suspects.
In that monotonous slog of a movie, there was really only one sequence where I thought I saw a glimmer of real intelligence and subversion. It comes (relatively) early in the film when Butler’s swaggering cop Nick ‘Big Nick’ O’Brien returns home from a long night of busting heads and frolicking shirtless with sex workers and promptly gets chewed out by his soon to be ex-wife because his dumb ass sent her a text intended for his mistress. As she hustles out of the house with their young daughters, she hangs back just long enough to hiss at Nick that his infidelity is all the more unbelievable because he can’t even get it up with her anymore.
And here I thought writer/director Christian Gudegast was doing something really special. After a first act of nonstop alpha posturing from ‘Big Nick’, suddenly you get confronted with the notion that beneath his leather jacket and puffed out chest, our tough talking hero is actually a literally limp-dicked loser who has to loudly play a badass on the job to cover for how pathetic he is at home
Den of Thieves doesn’t really do anything more with this, though to the film’s credit the subsequent scenes involving the dissolution of Nick’s marriage are played for maximum discomfort at (intentionally) excruciating length. Instead, that first film goes back to the safety of the familiar, but a much lesser version of the familiar.
If you asked me to find a compliment for that first Den of Thieves, the two individuals I’d single out for praise would be Butler for his willingness to go full scumbag without hesitation or apology, and O’Shea Jackson Jr. who proved to be a winning and likable presence, even if his role was intentionally limited to protect the Big Shocking Twist.
Which brings us to the sequel, Den of Thieves: Pantera (no 2 in the onscreen title). Picking up right where the first film left off (spoilers for anyone who hasn’t seen that movie) with criminal mastermind Donnie (Jackson Jr.) planning a diamond heist in Europe. Meanwhile, a humiliated Nick loses his marriage, his family, and his career and decides to head oversees and finally bring Donnie down. But when the two come face to face, Nick decides that he’s had it with life as a cop and joins forces with Donnie for the new heist.
Right off the bat, this is the most fun possible angle a sequel could take. For one, knocking Butler’s Big Nick down to zero allows the film to engage with those dropped themes from the first film. When we meet Nick this time out, he’s literally living out of his truck and Butler is somehow even more haggard and greasy than ever. You can almost smell the BO coming off him.
Butler also has a surprising amount of chemistry with Jackson Jr., and the two prove to be tremendous fun playing off one another. Their dynamic is somewhere in the mix of father/son, older/younger brothers, reluctant co-workers, with a healthy hint of homoerotic tension and the pairing gives Pantera a compelling narrative engine and a lighter, funnier touch. Turning Butler’s snarling big dog into the fish out of water trying to blend in with Jackson Jr.’s underworld crew gives both actors far more to chew on than the endless scenes of men in undershirts glowering at one another that ballooned that first film’s running time.
Pantera has a similarly sprawling length, but this time the pacing feels on point. Gudegast uses that breathing room not only to lay out a legitimately inventive and involving heist but to sell you on how seductive this outlaw lifestyle is to Nick. Part of what I found so confounding about the first film was that for all its bloat, it couldn’t find the time to create a single distinctive character or personality for any member of either the cops or the robbers. The whole ensemble blended together in a kind of morass of bloated muscles, shaved heads, and permanent scowls.
Here, the film brings you into the crew and lets the process absorb you as it does Nick. There’s a love of process and jargon, and a quiet confidence to both the characters and the filmmakers that can’t help but be intoxicating. You sincerely want to see these guys pull off their heist, but you also know that going through with this will dynamite whatever decency is left in the rancid mound of hamburger meat that Nick has for a heart.
The heist itself is an exceptional bit of nerve-rattling thriller filmmaking, a series of puzzles and tricks that fit together into a hugely satisfying mousetrap. And the fallout from the robbery makes for an impressive piece of action. You can see where Gudegast is culling from the history of other heist and Euro-thriller films, sure, but none of it feels wholesale cribbed from superior sources.
And maybe that’s the biggest differentiator between the first film and this second one. The shadow of Michael Mann still looms over Pantera because, well, it’s a crime film made in the 21st century. You’re gonna feel some Mannly fingerprints. The jargon-heavy exposition (and one plot-critical dance) feel indebted to Mann’s (brilliant) Miami Vice movie especially.
But Pantera lands on the healthier side of inspiration and influence. It no longer feels like Gudegast and company are trying and failing to copy Mann’s work, but like they’ve absorbed his style and themes and are now creating something indebted to those influences but wholly distinct from them as well.
The best thing I can say about Den of Thieves 2 is that it left me genuinely hopeful that we’ll get a Den of Thieves 3. I want to see Nick and Donnie chase each other around every continent we got until Donnie’s heisting nuclear warheads and Nick is commanding law enforcement from a moonbase. Hell, the Fast and Furious series is finally/mercifully due to wrap up soon, so let’s turn Den of Thieves into our new ongoing meathead soap opera that escalates from movie to movie until things enter live-action cartoon territory. I’m all in, let’s do this.
Den of Thieves – Pantera is in theaters now.
