Should you crammed a room with everybody that was clamoring for a second “Den of Thieves” film, you is likely to be arduous pressed to search out anybody who isn’t a credited forged or crew member, a relative or consultant of 1, or legendary Berlin College director Christian Petzold. Launched in 2018, the crime thriller a couple of Los Angeles sheriff recognized solely as Massive Nick (Gerard Butler) who’s hellbent on stopping a crew from robbing the Federal Reserve — solely to search out that the informant (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) he was leaning on was really enjoying him — hasn’t precisely made an irreversible mark on the zeitgeist. However it left the door open for future adventures, with Jackson’s smarter-than-he-looks Donnie fleeing to Europe and organising store within the excessive stakes world of diamond theft.
A mere seven years later, “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera” rolled into our lives with virtually as many purple flags because the Chicago Bears’ teaching emptiness. Should you have been in search of causes to really feel assured about its prospects, your decisions boiled right down to a mid-January launch date and a ridiculous subtitle that appears like an unserious try at invoking “John Wick: Parabellum.” However similar to the inexhaustibly artistic thieves that inhabit its eponymous den, Christian Gudegast’s sequel defies all odds en path to changing into one of the crucial entertaining new releases of the primary 240 hours of 2025.
The lives of Massive Nick and Donnie have veered in divergent instructions since they final parted methods. Donnie has thrived on the earth of European crime — he’s lengthy been financially set for all times, however he retains taking up more durable and more durable robberies to fulfill his want for problem. However again in Los Angeles, Massive Nick is spiraling. The comically macho lawman constructed his total id across the notion that the dangerous guys by no means beat him. Now that one lastly did, he’s unable to give attention to the rest.
However each time Massive Nick thinks he has a lead on Donnie’s newest nefarious deeds, his plans to analyze are shot down by superiors who insist on shielding from the general public from the truth that the Federal Reserve was robbed within the first place. Of their eyes, letting the thief get away with it’s higher than risking the status of the worldwide monetary system by letting everybody know there’s a nasty man to search for.
Like so many cinematic cops earlier than him — and, in all chance, like so many cinematic cops performed by Gerard Butler earlier than him — Massive Nick decides to take issues into his personal palms. Utilizing an expired U.S. Marshall badge that offers him the phantasm of worldwide jurisdiction, he travels to Antwerp to intercept Donnie’s newest scheme: robbing the vaults of one of many World Diamond Facilities. However relatively than cease the heist in its tracks and attempt to arrest Donnie, he involves his previous foe with a proposition: he desires in on the job. Claiming that he’s broke and bored with searching, he lends his abilities and regulation enforcement bona fides to a diamond heist that might remedy all of his monetary issues for good.
While you cease to contemplate how fiercely dedicated Nick was to stopping Ronnie’s first heist and the way tortured he was by the aftermath of his failure, it’s asinine for him to activate a dime so rapidly. However “Pantera” opts to embrace the silliness, buying and selling the cat-and-mouse sport for a buddy comedy dynamic between two charismatic characters. Massive Nick is a caricature in the very best senses of the world, a block of testosterone and self-loathing who takes his endeavors so cartoonishly significantly that it’s arduous to not be immersed in his foolish adventures. Jackson embodies Ronnie with much more charisma the second time round, and his whiz child appeal serves as the right foil to Massive Nick’s depth. Gudegast retains the slick set items shifting at such a brisk tempo that you simply’ll have an excessive amount of enjoyable to cease and think about the logic of any of it.
Even when no one was asking for “Den of Thieves 2,” it is likely to be time to start out crossing our fingers for “Den of Thieves 3.” Frankly, I’m much more excited for “Den of Thieves 7.” Butler and Jackson’s frenemy dynamic is firing on all cylinders by the tip of “Pantera,” and the overlap between the characters’ mutual respect for each other and insatiable want to screw one another over may result in countless future adventures on each aspect of the regulation. Every subsequent movie is certain to make much less sense than the final as their relationship will get extra sophisticated — and for January moviegoers, that is likely to be simply what the physician ordered.
Grade: B
A Lionsgate launch, “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera” opens in theaters on Friday, January 10.
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