The Doctor’s Diagnosis: D
I only watched the first Den of Thieves about a week ago when I realized that the sequel would be the first major release of 2025. I’m not sure why I missed the original in theaters when it was released in 2018, but I went into it with zero expectations and was very pleasantly surprised. Despite the excessive (nearly 2 and a ½ hour) running time, Den of Thieves is a hell of a lot of fun. It is like Heat crossed with Ocean’s Eleven with a dash of The Usual Suspects, but done in the style of a sleazy 80s action movie, like it was a lost Cannon Films production from 1985. For the first time since, well, ever, I was actually excited for the first release of the year. But then I watched it and remembered why I generally try to avoid feeling hope.
Note that if you haven’t seen the original, I highly recommend doing so before reading any further. It is pretty much impossible for me to discuss the sequel without spoiling the ending of the first movie.
The first movie ended with Donnie (played again here by O’Shea Jackson Jr.) relocated to London and planning a diamond heist. This movie is aware of half of that, as it opens with Donnie in France and planning a diamond heist. Not sure why the change. Anyway, Big Nick (again played by Gerard Butler), who is still obsessing over the events of the first movie, figures out what Donnie is up to and travels to France to stop him. He convinces Donnie that he is now on the other side of the law and joins the heist crew.
I would say that the filmmakers didn’t understand what made the first movie work, but that seems odd considering that they are both written and directed by the same guy (Christian Gudegast) and these are the only two movies that he has ever directed. You would think that this dude would have a better grasp of the material, but no, Den of Thieves 2, completely strips away the appeal of the original. When you have a super gritty, testosterone-fueled crime flick set in crime-riddled Los Angeles, what would you do for a sequel? If you said move it to France and devote more time to gelato and croissants than to shootouts, then your dumbass should move to Hollywood because that is what we get here. The first movie has enough gunfire and macho posturing to make the cast of The Expendables look like they are getting in touch with their feminine side, so it’s stunning that this movie (which is also almost 2 and ½ hours long) takes almost two full hours to get to any action whatsoever. When somebody finally fired a gun around the 100-minute mark, I turned to my friend and said “holy shit, someone finally fired a shot!” That should not have been a notable moment 100 fucking minutes into Den of Thieves 2.
Instead of the action and intensity of the first one, we get an agonizing amount of time dedicated to Nick assimilating into the gang and then planning the heist. The heist itself is so dull that I honestly zoned out and was only vaguely aware of what was happening in the last act, as if I was watching the movie through a boredom-induced brain fog. The original’s core premise (a cat-and-mouse chase between robbers and morally questionable cops) was nothing original, nor was its notion that there is a blurry line between those sides. That has been done a million times, including classics like The French Connection, Heat and The Dark Knight. But it did it well. The sequel leaves the cops in the background, putting all of the emphasis on this incredibly uninteresting gang and their even less interesting plan. The entire dynamic of the original is gone, leaving me with boring people sitting around, talking, drinking wine, getting high and generally testing my fucking patience.
Big Nick and Donnie also have zero chemistry together, a fact that was masked by the larger cast and greater ambition in the original. While the first one had an ensemble of memorable characters, this film focuses almost entirely on these two with significantly less entertaining results. Big Nick doesn’t even seem to be the same character most of the time; there were several occasions when I thought that the tough motherfucker from the original wouldn’t find himself in a situation or, at the least, would just pull out a gun and shoot his way out of it. Butler is trying his best, but the material is just oddly out of character (which, again, is odd considering that it is the same writer/director). Donnie is also about as charismatic as a used tissue. O’Shea Jackson Jr. was solid in the original, but the transition of Donnie to being a suave mastermind just doesn’t work. He worked as a street-smart, low-level criminal in the original, but just doesn’t have the gravitas or the demeanor to pull this off.
If you like sleazy, over-the-top crime flicks and haven’t seen the original Den of Thieves, than I highly recommend checking it out. This sequel feels more like a Fast & Furious knockoff than it does a successor to that movie. One final note: It’s amazing that this movie is named after one of my favorite bands, but there isn’t a single frigging Pantera song in the entire movie. Unbelievable. The next one will probably be Den of Thieves 3: Judas Priest just to piss me off.
