The climax of Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, in which two sports cars race through the winding hillside outside Nice, France, trading automatic weapons fire at each other, is in fact the most entertaining this movie gets.
Den of Thieves 2
Film: Den of Thieves 2: Pantera
Cast: Gerard Butler, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Meadow Williams, Jordan Bridges, Evin Ahmad, Swen Temmel
Director: Christian Gudegast
Rating: 2.5/5
Runtime: 144 min
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‘Den of Thieves’ was a humdinger of a heist thriller but this Part 2, a sequel to the 2018 cult film from Christian Gudegast, though fairly entertaining tries too hard to be smart and twisty. The original was about a group of bank robbers stealing “unfit” money that’s been taken out of the system by the Fed before it’s destroyed.
The climax of Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, in which two sports cars race through the winding hillside outside Nice, France, trading automatic weapons fire at each other, is in fact the most entertaining this movie gets. The rest is all about striving to come up with goods that could top the entertainment value of the first film.
This is not a movie about one long unrelenting car chase though, but it does have some crusty moments brought about by a good balance of violence, tension, and momentum. This is a heist thriller.
The former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy, Big Nick (Gerard Butler), knows that Donnie Wilson (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) was the real mastermind of the job, and it eats at Nick that he got away with it. When bank accounts connect Donnie to a recent diamond heist out of Antwerp, Nick heads to Europe to find his man. Donnie (the guy who got away in the first film), who is now embroiled in the treacherous world of diamond thievery and the infamous Panther mafia, as they plot a massive heist of the world’s largest diamond exchange. Big Nick becomes a part of the gang and it’s a big if about his being undercover. That’s the way the screenplay by Christian Gudegast and Paul T. Scheuring plays it.
Pantera has Big Nick trying hard to integrate himself into Donnie’s crew of Balkan career criminals. He is divorced and heartily going towards the wild side. He initially fails to ingratiate himself with the European criminals, but eventually does get a few of them to warm up to him by being an absolute party animal.
Writer/director Christian Gudegast uses up most of the first half depicting the development of an uneasy rapport between Nick and Donnie, and the former’s attempt to integrate himself into an already-formed crew. This section is purely development oriented and gives the audience enough insight to be invested enough for what comes next.
The enemies as allies trope may not be novel but in this movie it seems believable. Gudegast makes sure we are in the know about how the crime is pulled off. And, Butler now an over-the-hill action hero, is all the better for it. His Big Nick is a mess, and he has a sweaty charisma that makes him believable. Butler realistically inhabits Big Nick, and that’s what makes this movie bearable.
Both leads give good performances. Butler, makes Nick bitter, disheveled, and one can sense how far he has fallen since the original. The actor makes it difficult to decipher which side he is really on. Jackson is smooth and establishes a persona that is hard to read. He is a criminal but he puts on a gentlemanly suavity that is appealing. Together they generate an attention-getting chemistry.
Den 2 is shot well but the plot conveniences, meaningless subplots, shoddy background score and inconsistent pacing sully much of the positives. There’s not much tension in this telling either. With a plot that’s contived and derivative it doesn’t get much beyond an average movie going experience.
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