Den of Thieves 2: Pantera is a heist movie, a sequel to 2018's Den Of Thieves. After the nebulous conclusion of the first movie LASD sheriff Big Nick(Gerard Butler) continues his pursuit of Donnie(O'Shea Jackson Jr.) eventually tracking him to Nice, France where Donnie is putting together a diamond district job. Nick blackmails Donnie into putting him on the team for the heist and the two develop a cautious friendship as they prepare.
Butler continues to slug it out with Jason Statham for the title of King of January Dad Cinema and he continues to deliver. He's older and is clearly slowing down but he's as charismatic and watchable as ever. Jackson continues his solid, slow-and-steady career, and he is equally compelling here, deploying his lowkey charm and inherent onscreen likability to great effect. The two have great chemistry and equal time is spent on their burgeoning friendship as the main event heist and it mostly works. The supporting cast has some talent, particularly Evin Ahmad who has a sharp and magnetic screen presence, but mostly they are all unknown European actors that don't really distinguish themselves. There's something lost in the sequel without having the deeper bench of known character actors.
Visually the movie is beautiful, shot not on location but close, in the Canary Islands. The action sequences are thrilling, tightly choregraphed, and shot with a focus on authenticity and suspense. The problem is there's only two of them, one at the beginning and one at the end. In the middle there's a pretty great scene at a party where the heist crew all do drugs but in between the story drags. At almost two and a half hours the movie is simply too long. The time spent developing Big Nick's character and then his and Donnie's connection is well intended and effective up to a point but this is a heist movie, awards season counter programing, and it is just way too languorous in its pace to completely deliver.
Fun, entertaining, overstays its welcome by half an hour.
Currently in theaters, coming soon to VOD.
Rent It.
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