'Den of Thieves: European Vacation'

'Den of Thieves 2: Pantera' takes the first film's surviving tough guys abroad.

Spoilers for Den of Thieves; no spoilers for Den of Thieves 2.

Writer/director Christian Gudegast’s Den of Thieves was ostensibly a remake of Michael Mann’s Heat, only with the toxic masculinity dialed up to 11 (which is really saying something) and a The Usual Suspects-esque twist ending tacked on.

Early in Gudegast’s sequel, Den of Thieves 2: Pantera (the number never actually appears during the title sequence, where it’s just called Den of Thieves: Pantera; dunno what’s going on there, but I assume it’s some studio marketing bullshit), the titular thieves are on a heist, and while communicating via radio, use the code name “Ronin.” That should tip you off as to which film Gudegast will borrow from this time out: instead of a climactic post-robbery shootout set during broad daylight in LA, we’ll get a big car chase somewhere in Europe. Which is exactly what happens.

As for the basic plot of Pantera, it finds weary, barely-sober LAPD cop Nick O’Brien (Gerard Butler) globe-hopping in search of Donnie (O’Shea Jackson Jr., a.k.a. Ice Cube II), who was basically the Verbal Kint of the first Den. When we last saw Donnie, he’d managed to abscond with millions of dollars to London, where he was plotting his next big score while somehow passing as a local despite having the worst British accent you’ve ever heard outside of a grade school production of Oliver!. Nick locates Donnie easily enough, probably because Donnie is now using the worst French accent you’ve heard outside of a grade school production of Cyrano de Bergerac. Think of how much trouble Donnie could have saved himself if he’d invested some of his money in a better dialect coach.

ANYWAY, the hook here is that when Nick finds Donnie, he claims he’s tired of being one of the good guys, and insists on joining Donnie’s latest scheme, which is to rob a vault full of diamonds. And Donnie goes along with Nick’s butting-in for reasons I honestly couldn’t tell you.

Despite being derivative, Den of Thieves was entertaining enough; there’s also some fun to be had in Pantera, although not as much. Both movies have the same issues.

First: Nick is supposed to be kind of a tragic figure, but he mostly just comes off as an asshole. In Heat, Al Pacino’s character - like most Michael Mann protagonists - is a workaholic who ultimately chooses his job over his family commitments… but because that job is stopping bad guys from doing bad things, and because Al Pacino is Al fuckin’ Pacino, we still kinda like him. But Nick’s apparent reason for neglecting his family is to spend time drinking heavily while hanging out with sex workers; his job has nothing to do with how poorly he treats his wife and kids (I mean, I guess maybe he drinks so much because he’s haunted by the violence he witnesses daily, but that’s never implied, let alone explicitly stated; the guy just seems to be a drunk philanderer). Plus, while I like Gerry Butler as much as the next middle-aged White dude who’s nostalgic for ‘80s action movies, Al Pacino he ain’t.

Second: the middle of the movie is bogged down by a lot of wheel-spinning. Gudegast struggles to organically incorporate character development his plotting. So the narrative periodically takes these detours to let us get to know the main characters as people a little bit, and while these moments should bolster our attachment to and understanding of the characters, we’re very aware that they don’t have shit to do with shit. For example, in the first Den of Thieves, one of the robbers was played by 50 Cent, and there’s a scene where he and his buddies intimidate his daughter’s prom date, and the scene is only there so we know 50 Cent has a family and we should feel sad when he inevitably gets killed during the final shootout. In Pantera, there’s a sequence where Nick and one of the other characters get drunk and high and have a late-night snack while talking about their fathers, and the scene is only there so that… well, you can probably guess.

Consequently, like Den of Thieves, Pantera’s best parts are its first and third acts, because that’s stuff is actually, like, happening. The middle sags under the weight of people sitting around talking, which means you really feel every second of Pantera’s 144-minute runtime. For this reason, Den of Thieves plays better on television than it did on the big screen, and I suspect the same will be true of Pantera.

Pantera also has its unique problems, too, though. For one thing, it has a weird tendency to redundantly repeat information, often within the same scene. Worse, the supporting cast isn’t nearly as charismatic as that of the original. The best part of Den of Thieves was Pablo Schreiber as Ray Merrimen, the leader of the thieves - the De Niro to Butler’s Pacino - but he didn’t survive the first movie, and neither Jackson nor any of the new additions has enough personality to fill Schreiber’s shoes. Evin Ahmad, as the sole female thief in the bunch, comes closest, but ultimately she’s there to look sexy and be a potential love interest for Butler more than to play an actual character.

Gudegast should’ve hired Schrieber’s older brother, Liev, to play Merrimen’s elder sibling, out to take revenge on Nick for killing his baby bro; he would have made for a worthy foil. Pantera ends with a set-up for Den of Thieves 3, though, so maybe it’s not too late.