Den of Thieves 2: Pantera Is A Shockingly Good Time
The sequel is bigger and better, but retains Den of Thieves’ dirtbag charm.
When it was released in 2018, Den of Thieves was called, somewhat disparagingly, “dirtbag Heat.” And that pithy descriptor certainly wasn’t wrong — the crime thriller followed a career thief (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) whose elaborate heists catch the attention of a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department detective (Gerard Butler) with marital problems. Like the Michael Mann classic, Den of Thieves was a cat-and-mouse thriller between a criminal and a cop who had more in common than they would’ve liked to admit. But unlike Heat, Den of Thieves was inarguably, unashamedly, trashy.
The first Den of Thieves was released at the height of Gerard Butler’s reign as B-movie king, amid a string of sweaty actioners like London Has Fallen, Gods of Egypt, and Geostorm, and is very much cut from the same cloth as those films. It’s mean, it’s grimy, and it’s packed to the gills with testosterone. To be honest, it’s a mostly middling crime thriller that might’ve been destined to be forgotten at the bottom of the Walmart bargain bin, until it was announced that director Christian Gudegast was planning a sequel with both Butler and Jackson Jr. Seven years later, that sequel has finally emerged — and it’s a shockingly good time.
O’Shea Jackson Jr.’s Donnie gets to expand his backstory in the sequel.
Den of Thieves 2: Pantera takes the franchise (if it can be called that) global. Taking place immediately after the events of the first Den of Thieves, Donnie Wilson (Jackson Jr.) has taken his newly acquired fortune to Europe, where he’s joined an international criminal operation led by the steely mastermind Jovanna (Evin Ahmad). But a flashy heist puts him back on the radar of Detective Nicholas "Big Nick" O'Brien (Butler), whose dogged insistence that Donnie is still at large has cost him the goodwill of his superiors. More determined to catch Donnie than ever, Nick quits his job and makes his way over to Marseilles, where Donnie and his new gang of highly trained thieves are already in the process of infiltrating the city’s diamond district in order to steal a priceless, highly protected diamond.
Den of Thieves 2 takes its inspiration from the real-life Antwerp diamond heist, and as a result, feels a little more put together than the first film. Donnie’s new gang is made up of career criminals from across Europe, and their gadgets and ambitions are much more sophisticated than anything his two-bit cohorts could’ve come up with. The movie trades in the original’s grimy LA streets for the glossier streets of Marseilles. And Donnie’s plans have become more elaborate, relying on the kind of absurd clockwork precision you only see out of tentpole Hollywood movies. So it’s all up to Butler — who blusters in, all red-faced piggishness and greasy-haired bravado — to muss it all up again.
Butler’s Nick arrives in Marseilles not with the goal of catching Donnie, but of joining him. He blackmails Donnie into letting him weasel his way into their operation, using his ex-cop cred to get himself a job as the team’s security. And that’s where Den of Thieves 2 surprisingly starts to come alive.
The buddy-comedy elements of Den of Thieves 2 becomes the movie’s surprising strength.
The sequel wisely doesn’t try to replicate the Heat-inspired cat-and-mouse thrills of the original, and instead becomes a wildly fun buddy comedy. The dynamic between Butler and Jackson Jr., which we only got in fits and starts in the first film, is given the spotlight in Den of Thieves 2, the two of them clashing before striking up a surprising camaraderie during a drug-fueled night at a Eurotrash club (in the one particularly grungy sequence that recaptures the sleazy charm of the first film). The film could’ve propelled itself purely by the joy of watching Butler and Jackson Jr. butt heads, but manages to up the stakes in a plot that includes the infamous Panther mafia, whom Donnie has personally pissed off.
It all could be a big old mess of subplots and twists, but Den of Thieves 2 interweaves its storylines rather seamlessly — even throwing in some tender character moments between Donnie and Nick as they bond over their similar pasts. It all culminates in a thrilling heist sequence that walks a delicate line between absurdly complex and surprisingly grounded. Den of Thieves 2 never pretends to be remotely realistic, but there’s a degree of respectability lent to it by its real-life inspirations, with writer-director Christian Gudegast paying particular attention to the details and minutiae that would make up a difficult diamond heist like this. However, as thrilling as its (multiple!) heist sequences are, the genuinely sweet, and often hilarious, dynamic between Donnie and Nick almost makes you wish that Gudegast focused instead on them and their shenanigans, rather than a glossy heist that wouldn’t be out of place in a Soderbergh movie.
Still, it’s a pretty big feat that Den of Thieves 2 managed to be as enjoyable as it is. The first film has its defenders, but was mostly a sleazy riff of the many, many cat-and-mouse crime thrillers that had preceded it. Den of Thieves 2 might not be doing anything new, but it found its secret sauce: Butler and Jackson Jr., whose chemistry has the potential to launch a whole franchise. Could we see these two chasing each other across the globe for decades to come? If Den of Thieves 2: Pantera is any indication, we should be.
