Den of Thieves 2: Pantera

After the robbery of the Los Angeles Federal Reserve Bank, Deputy Sheriff "Big Nick" O'Brien is still hunting the elusive genius criminal, Donnie Wilson. Having followed the clues across the globe, Big Nick finds himself in the south of France, and joining Donnie’s heist crew as they enter the treacherous and unpredictable world of European diamond thieves.

So, in the first Den of Thieves movies…

“Big Nick” O'Brien is the hard-drinking leader of the Regulators, an elite unit of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, cops who do what they want, and otherwise strut around with impunity. Ray Merrimen is the recently paroled leader of a gang of ex-military vets who call themselves The Outlaws and use their combat expertise and tactical skills to pull precision robberies. The two crews find themselves on a collision course when The Outlaws take on a seemingly impossible heist, to rob the Los Angeles Federal Reserve Bank using a plan created by a mysterious criminal genius.

It’s really not that much of a mystery. The poster tips it off…

The first Den of Thieves is a Micheal Bay wannabe neo-noir heist flick, where a group of vets, long dismissed and ignored by society, are forced to turn to crime, and a gang of corrupt asshole cowboy cops are on their tails. It’s a film filled with swagger and swinging dicks and gritty shootouts, but then it switches suddenly to the story of an impossible super heist, full of double crosses and "what may at first seem like failures but were actually part of the plan all along" twists. It was fine, a kind of meathead Ocean’s 11 meets Heat meets The Usual Suspects.

But while it was fun, I give it a thumb’s down.

This is mostly because I’m tired of the faux morality of these kinds of films, these action movies where the vets have a reasonable beef with a society that used them and then pissed on them, so with no other options, they turn to crime. This isn’t the problem for me. My problem with these kinds of films is how, despite the fact that the cops are clearly the bad guys, every time, in the end, the vets always lose, and either end up in jail or all dead.

I hate that.

Especially when the vets are shown to be from under-resourced communities, people who had no other options than the military, eople who put their lives on the line for Oil Wars and American Corporate interests, and what do they get for doing that? f they manage to make it back whole, or even at all? They get nothing. They get less than shit. And they’re supposed to be the bad guys for not accepting that? Especially when they’re robbing the government? Especially when they're going up against the L.A. Sheriff’s Department?

Seriously, click here. Peruse that shit for a while.

Anyway, on top of all that, the plot was just too broken for me. Granted, super-heists are complete nonsense by their very definition, but this one in particular was hard to swallow. My wife used to work at the Federal Reserve Bank, so I know for a fact that, outside of specific circumstances, visitors aren’t allowed inside the building. Not even family and friends. So, they certainly don’t allow random Food Delivery assholes to show up, and not only enter the building, but to then wander around freely. Nope. Impossible. It’s just not real. It's a cheat, either the result of bad research, or lazy writing. It’s a script failure that should have been fixed, but wasn't, so... (fart noise). Thumbs down. But otherwise, yeah, it was fun.

So, in Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, enemies become friends…

Donnie Wilson, having been revealed as a criminal genius, is now in Antwerp, Belgium, a part of the infamous Panther Crew. Using one of Donnie's plans, the Panthers pull a quick smash and grab from an airport hanger, stealing a massive red diamond, and then flee the scene disguised as cops, getting away clean.

Donnie is feeling good.

Meanwhile, in Long Beach, California, in the wake of the Federal Reserve Bank heist—an event the government will not officially confirm, partially because of the embarrassment, and partially because the heist was based on the same basic idea as the film Dead Presidents—Deputy Sheriff “Big Nick” O'Brien, looking like the sweatiest and most hung-over dad ever, is recently divorced and currently on leave from the Los Angeles Sherriff’s Department. He’s a pariah due to his continued insistence on finding Donnie Wilson.

On his own, bluffing his way through an investigation that is happening outside of the law, and following what few clues Donnie has left behind, Big Nick flies out to Nice, France.

In the city of Nice, The Panthers are busy planning their next heist, to rob the diamond vault at the World Diamond Center. Donnie has a plan, and he is busy executing it when Big Nick shows up and forces his way into the crew. Claiming that he wants a big pay day, especially now that his real life has basically fallen apart, he has few other options, so he wants in.

But all the while, Big Nick is meeting up with the local French cops.

With Big Nick now on the team, he and Donnie and the Panthers make their plans and preparations during the day, then party-hearty all night in the kinds of clubs that would be equally at home both in Europe and the Jersey Shore. But the whole time, the Panthers are bickering and fracturing, and basically making it clear that they definitely should not be doing this heist together.

The Panthers crew is made up of Jovanna, a sexy thief, and a handful of straight off the rack brutes from Eastern-European-Thugs-R-Us, with names like Slavko, Vuk, Dragan, and Marko. But eventually, they are forced to kick Vuk and Marko out of the crew, because they’re jerks.

This is a move that is clearly going to bite them in the ass later.

That’s when the 'Ndrangheta—the Calabrian mafia—show up.

They snatch Donnie and Big Nick off the street, and whisk them off to a meeting with an old mobster. The old mobster, known as The Octopus, is mad because the red diamond, the one stolen in the airport heist that we saw at the beginning of the film, was his. He demands its return. But since Donnie has used the red diamond as a way to bluff their way into the World Diamond Center as legitimate diamond sellers, so it is currently sitting in the very vault they intend to rob, the mobsters release them to complete the heist and return the red diamond… or else.

The heist is complex and precise, and timed down to the minute, and also clearly dependent upon multiple coincidences and moments of luck. It goes great, until it doesn’t. Chased by cops and security, they manage to hand off the loot to Jovanna, then Nick, Donnie, and Slavko ditch the police in a very Mission Impossible kind of way, before racing up and over the curvy mountain roads to escape across the Italian border.

Unfortunately, this is where Vuk and Marko ambush them.

With their new gang, the Tigers, the chase is now on through the curvy European mountain roads. There’s a bunch of shooting, a lot of dramatic shifting of gears, a little bit of stomping on brakes, some spinning of the steering wheel, and no small amount of EDM.

The Tigers manage to get the upper hand, and are about to execute our heroes on the side of the road, but luckily, the Octopus’ henchmen appear seemingly out of nowhere and save them at the last minute. Whew. Donnie returns the diamond, and the Octopus spares their lives.

So, with the heist over, the Panthers celebrate their victory in Italy. But then French cops burst in and arrest everyone, because Big Nick ratted them all out.

Damn it, Big Nick!

But Big Nick feels guilty about it because of the bromance between him and Donnie, so he visits Donnie in jail, and while the security system rolls, he drops the most incredibly obvious hint as to where Donnie should sit in the van while he is being transported to a French prison. It turns out, the Octopus springs Donnie in transit, all so he can recruit Donnie for an unspecified new job. In the end, as it is implied that all of the Panthers have been sprung from prison, we see Big Nick smiling as he drives up the southern coastline of France.

Sponsored by Ciroque vodka, Audi, and Doritos, Den of Thieves 2: Pantera is a movie that is supposed to be about a super heist by a group of professional thieves, but it is filled with the kind of mistakes you’d expect to see in a film about a bunch of dumb junkies who decide to rob a pawn store on a whim.

Really, for a group of supposed professional thieves, these morons are way too loud, way too obvious, squabble too much, their plan is way too iffy, and for the most part, between the mob, the cops, and the assholes they fired from the group midway through planning the job, they mostly seem to just make enemies. They’re just… really sloppy. It’s true, no heist go off without a hitch in these kinds of films, that’s one of the tropes of the genre, but still, despite this being a big dumb action movie that is obviously fake, the amount of mistakes that the characters make only makes the whole thing seem too unbelievable, like... I don't believe in their skills.

On top of that, the action is pretty limp in this film. The heist lacks tension, or a strong sense of geography. The shootouts lack snap. The chase is anemic, which is a big time sin, as this kind of chase specifically, the twisting European mountain road chase, has been done before in spectacular ways. Maybe it’s just me, but in a film like this, if you aren’t putting the pedal to metal in your action scenes, what the fuck is the point? Go big or go home, otherwise you’re wasting everyone’s time.

Plus, once again, even if it was only briefly, the cops win again. That’s garbage. Especially against a complete non-victim like the World Diamond Center. Why do this? What’s wrong with boat drinks and white sand beaches and sailing away into the sunset? Especially these days? Who really wants to see the people stealing from the rich, the government, and the corporations get caught? Who likes that ending? Especially when they’ve otherwise been the hero characters of the film?

It makes no sense to me.

Finally, story-wise, this was a weird film. It ultimately felt very small, and mostly seems to be more concerned with setting up new pieces and establishing new relationships. In a way, it reminds me of films like Iron Man 2, films that do a lot of the heavy lifting needed to shift a franchise over from the old phase into a new phase, getting it ready for the new tone and style of future films in the franchise.

I’m intrigued by this, as well as the Den of Thieves franchise potential.

As Fast and the Furious winds down, there’s a meathead hole in American Cinema, and I would like to see Den of Thieves fill it. Only this time, instead of an ever-expanding and changing roster of numbskull superheroes in their Ed Hardy shirts, dragon-print jeans, and tribal tattoos, doing ridiculous stunts in ridiculous cars, it’d feature an ever-expanding and changing roster of ridiculously competent super-thieves as they hit ridiculously impossible targets around the globe, all while using completely nonsense tech items and equipment.

I would love that.

But now, after watching this film, I have a few doubts about the filmmakers’ general ability to pull off what I'm looking for in an entertaining way. So, if the Den of Thieves franchise continues, I hope it will be guided by better, more interesting, and more daring hands.

I did like how this film proves once again, that if you're going to rob something in Europe, the best time to do it is during a soccer match.

In the end, I mostly just found myself wishing that all the various gangs were wearing distinctive satin jackets all done up in their respective animal themes, because otherwise, it was sometimes hard telling some of the minor characters apart. Honestly, after watching this film, I really feel like it would’ve been much better if the whole thing had just been a straight-up supervillain movie instead. It would’ve been much more fun if the characters were all dressed in supervillain costumes the whole time, and Big Nick was actually a disgraced superhero, but other than that... the film was exactly the same. It would’ve been like the comic book Supercrooks, and it’s Netflix adaptation, but y’know… good. Oh well, if wishes and buts were candy and nuts, we'd all have a merry christmas, right?

Anyway, as is, this film is pretty forgettable.