I feel like Christian Gudegast, the writer/director, was going for an epic heist movie. Kudos to him for having grand ambitions. However, I feel that the movie falls short of that vision.

What I liked

The acting. For the most part, I felt like all of the actors embodied their roles well. In particular, Gerard Butler has a more expressive role in this movie than his usual action/drama roles require. In fact, there’s next to no action in this movie. And what action there is isn’t exactly spectacular.

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I like the dramatic ending. I won’t go into spoilery detail. But the part of the ending that I understood was well done.

What I Disliked

I’m not sure I got everything that was going on with the plot. We have the original heist team, led by Donnie Wilson (O’Shea Jackson Jr., Ice Cube’s son.) and Jovanna (Evin Ahmad). Then there’s Nick (Gerard Butler) as the detective. That’s easy enough to keep track of. But then there’s the Italian mob guys, and the guys on the heist team that get booted. Sometimes I was a little confused what a scene was trying to accomplish. And I’m completely confused by the ending. I’ve been thinking back on it and I got nothing.

The heist itself was a little anti-climatic—I’ve seen better. In some ways I can see the heist as a prop so the main characters can have their interactions. There’s a scene with Donny and Nick at the cafe that is really the focal point of the entire movie as we learn what motivated them down their respective paths.

I’m not a mastermind criminal, so I can’t say I know what I’m talking about here, but Nick switching sides and joining the team just doesn’t fit one little bit. They brush it off completely with the scene at the club where they offer Nick some drugs. He hesitates, and Donny tells him, “They know that cops don’t do drugs. So hit that shit and show them you’ve really switch sides.” (I’m paraphrasing here, but that’s the gist.) And so Nick takes a hit and all is well. And I call bullshit. I’m certain that undercover cops do drugs. I’ve certainly seen that a dozen times in other movies. It should have been way harder for Nick to convince them. And besides that, why is Donny on his side in the first place? Why isn’t he more skeptical?

Traffic

During the heist and getaway scene there is ZERO traffic. I know the heist is performed at night during a football match, but there’s going to be some traffic. And then during the chase scene they drive into a tunnel and come out and suddenly it’s sunrise. How does that work? The heist was not super late at night because they did it during a football match. At the very latest it’s going to be 11:00 PM. I know Europe has some long tunnels, but not long enough for a car chase to go on for six hours until sunrise.

The car chase goes up into the mountains and then at a random moment the bad guys manage to shoot out a tire and cause Donny and Nick to crash. It looks like our guys are in deep shit. And then the bag guys get gunned down from above by the Italian mob guys? How in the hell did they know exactly where to be? There’s a saying, “You can use coincidence to get your characters into trouble, but you can’t use coincidence to get your characters out of trouble.”

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Grade: C-

About The Peetimes: It wasn’t easy finding Peetimes because the story flips between actions of various groups. I managed to find three Peetimes where there’s no important plot development or action.

There are no extra scenes during, or after, the end credits of Den of Thieves 2: Pantera.

Plot
Big Nick is back on the hunt in Europe and closing in on Donnie, who is embroiled in the treacherous world of diamond thieves and the infamous Panther mafia, as they plot a massive heist of the world’s largest diamond exchange.