Los Angeles Sheriff Nick O’Brien (played by Gerard Butler) sees a news report of a diamond heist at the Antwerp airport in Belgium and notices some similarities to unsolved cases in Southern California. After doing some digging, he realizes the burglary was, in fact, led by Donnie Wilson (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), the very man he’s been chasing for years. O’Brien travels to Nice, France, meets up with Wilson and shocks his adversary by joining his team. Wilson’s crew is set to rob the Diamond District to not only score a big payday but also reclaim the rare, massive pink diamond he stole in Antwerp.
Butler may get top billing in the credits and on the movie poster but, make no mistake, Jackson is the star of this installment. We’ve seen him in the OBI-WAN KENOBI series, COCAINE BEAR and playing his dad in STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON, but it’s the role of Donnie that allows him to show some range, own a character and grow with a franchise.
This is a heist movie and the heist scene is intense, dramatic and fun. Yes, it uses a handful of clichés but, as a whole, it’s edge-of-your-seat entertainment. The problem is, that scene is only 20 minutes long. The audience has to get through the other two hours that surrounds it. And that two hour sandwich? For the most part, it’s slow, complicated and uninteresting.
There are new characters coming from all directions. There’s a “broker” that’s important to the story, there’s a “point guard” making introductions, there’s a mobster, there’s a faction of the crew that goes rogue, there’s a “gatekeeper,” there’s a French police officer, blah blah blah. And, when they all have a part to play in the climax of the film, it creates a sense of confusion for the audience.
Essentially, it falls into the trap that a lot of heist movies fall into: over-upping the stakes. It’s like they wrote the screenplay with one question: “Wouldn’t it be cool if we had as many different characters as possible impact the final act?”
No. It wouldn’t.
Just as its predecessor was, DEN OF THIEVES 2 is written and directed by Christian Gudegast. But, this time around, the directing flare of the 2018 installment was completely absent. No creative character name titling, no musical cues and no interesting creative shots. It’s almost as if the studio green lit the movie and Gudegast rested on his laurels, thrilled with being given the funds to travel to all the amazing locations around the world.
At the end of the day, DEN OF THIEVES 2: PANTERA falls short of the original. In fairness, most sequels do, but this is devoid of anything that made its predecessor special or fun. Jackson shines and the heist itself is intense but, other than that, it’s unnecessarily complicated and not worth going to the theater for. If you’re a fan of the genre, wait for streaming.
JKG SCORE: 4.5
Untitled Film Project 