Den of Thieves 2: Generic, Dull, and Deeply Flawed

Note - this article is a re-publishing of an earlier review to combat techincal difficulties on my site. I have what I think is a fix, so here's to hoping this is the last time.

At one point during this movie, I remarked to a friend in the theater that Den of Thieves 2: Pantera was what would happen if Tenet and Mission Impossible had a baby. That is, a baby that looks like Tenet, acts like Mission: Impossible, and has a third of the brains of the former and a fifth of the momentum of the latter. To be completely fair to the movie, I had neither seen nor recalled ever hearing about the first Den of Thieves, but while I was watching its sequel, it became somewhat apparent to me very quickly that this movie was very much its own standalone story that didn't really have much of anything to do narratively with its predecessor, so I can't imagine I'm being unfair to this movie by not watching Den of Thieves 1. In case it's not clear to you yet, I didn't like this movie. It's awkwardly plotted, annoyingly generic, and worst of all, bafflingly dull. It was not at all what I expected from a Hollywood heist movie, and for once, that's not really a compliment coming from me. There's nothing wrong with having a little fun depicting international thievery and conspiracy, and this movie just didn't get that memo, instead trying to pace itself methodically despite not having enough meat on its bones to do so. On top of everything else wrong with it, it's a shame that this movie thinks it's a lot better than it actually is.

To give you a brief synopsis, Den of Thieves 2: Pantera is a 2025 heist movie that follows Nicholas O'Brien, a lawman who infiltrates a gang of robbers planning a high-stakes theft in Europe.

For all of the problems with Den of Thieves 2, its visual style is not one of them. The cinematography by Terry Stacey is clean, crisp, and very fun to look at. It didn't have a ton of flair to it, but a utilitarian image is not necessarily a bad one, and in many ways, it reminded me a lot of Hoyte Van Hoytema's work on Christopher Nolan's Tenet, a movie I mentioned at the start of this review. The beginning of this movie is also interesting and well-executed if not necessarily anything we haven't seen before, even if it outpaces and outraces much of the rest of the plot in both efficiency and quality. Speaking of the plot, it's somewhat contained, which is both a blessing and a curse. On the upside, you don't absolutely have to see the first Den of Thieves, but on the downside, this approach is easy, obvious, and doesn't give you much reason to go see this one if you merely tolerated or flat-out didn't like the last one.

Zooming in on the actual moving parts of the story at play here, there is a lot and I mean a lot of exposition. I'm not the type of critic who's completely against a level of expositional dialogue, and I get that heavy auditory exposition inevitably comes with heist movies, but the laying of the groundwork in this movie is way too much for way too long, and other espionage and heist movies, most notably Mission Impossible, exposit far more effectively. But on the upside, when it came to the characterization here, I found the relatively even focus on Nicholas and the group of thieves to be an intriguing approach, even if Nicholas is by far the most interesting character in this movie - if only for a lack of much to say about any of the other characters.

Fortunately, even if there's not much character development to be had here, Gerard Butler bounces off the rest of the cast well, most notably O'Shea Jackson Jr.'s Donnie, and so it's a shame that this movie can't match the level of intrigue created by this character dynamic with its story. Some other reviewers may try to label this movie as methodical or patient, but I'm sorry - it's just not. I think slow or uneventful would be the adjective you're looking for. A slow burn needs to have some sense of escalation, and that's missing here. Some setpieces would have certainly helped Den of Thieves 2 along its way, and while I appreciate it for not trying to lean too much on spectacle, maybe it could, you know, do something, anything at all? In addition, a lot of the ways in which this movie occasionally progresses its plot are very forced, and this was just a pretty obvious sign of a lack of imagination on the part of the writers.

Thankfully, even if much of this movie may not work, it's not a total loss, as the third act is head and shoulders above the rest of the film in terms of quality. The actual robbery is well-staged and intelligent, a surprising and welcome departure from the monotony and ineffectiveness of the first two acts. It effectively uses patterns and time limits to its advantage. What's more, I liked how the action and tension in the final act were drawn out. This act grabbed my attention and intrigue and kept it in a way that the movie hadn't been able to up until this point, and finally seemed to introduce legitimate stakes to what was happening. But all of that said, this movie ultimately fell victim to its own premise by the time the credits rolled, and the resolutions of this movie felt very much like a cheap bait-and-switch. Perhaps that wording is too harsh, but the way this movie plays its cards at the end really neuters all that - or conversely - what little came before.

I suppose it can't be helped that January tends to be the month when studios will release movies that they know won't perform well critically, but I'm not going to excuse Den of Thieves 2: Pantera for being both poorly written and oddly dull. A slow movie needs to have a legitimate and often captivating reason to be slow, and that's lacking here. What's more, this movie's R-rating feels incredibly slapped-on, and it plays like Mission Impossible with naughty words rather than really, truly finding a reason to effectively leverage its rating to do something noteworthy. Normally in a review like this, I'd at least be able to say that movies like this are entertaining. But Den of Thieves 2 can't be bothered to stop trying to imitate far better films enough to try and do something interesting, and so where it inevitably falls short of its criminal-focused compatriots, it's often far less fun as well. It's common that we can't have everything in a movie. What's far less common is when we can't have much of anything at all.

Den of Thieves 2: Pantera - 5/10

Ephesians 4:28