Aside from numbering among its fans the esteemed German arthouse stalwart Christian Petzold, 2018’s cops-and-robbbers potboiler Den of Thieves made a name for itself by doing a far more convincing impression of Michael Mann’s cinema than the many that have tried. Its daunting two-hour-twenty length leavened by the most playful, unpredictable performance of Gerard Butler’s career, it earned every one of those minutes on merit of its scrupulously detail-oriented approach to the heist, with a focus on the nitty-gritty of process that made Mann’s masterpiece Heat both credible and engrossing. The magic-hour moments of pensiveness on a pristine Angeleno beach may have laid the homage on a little thick, but first-time feature director Christian Gudegast had the moves to back it up, his muscular film-making style serving the pleasures of its genre: the tension of a ticking clock, the insidery sophistication of burglary tech, the intense competency of the monomaniacally driven personalities drawn to the profession.
Seven years after the first installment spun an impressive payday from its ignominious January release date, Gudegast has returned to dispel the doldrums of a supposed releasing dead zone once again, and to prove that he’s now perfected the other key facet of Mann cosplay. Though renowned as the king of the crime saga, Mann orchestrated Heat like a macho melodrama, a tacit romance between two withdrawn men who must channel their flirtation, connection and arguments into gunplay. With an adroit touch elevating its imitative streak, the memorably titled Den of Thieves 2: Pantera leans into the characterization of Butler’s uncouth, Pepto-swigging, name-taking sheriff Big Nick as a figure of emotional waywardness. He’s a real guy’s guy, practically sweating testosterone, and yet his arc in his second outing follows plot beats more traditionally assigned to young women. Following a bad breakup, our protagonist spends a semester abroad in Europe, where they broaden their horizons and regain a little zest for life while opening their eyes to the one true love that’s been right there all along. He’s not exactly eating, praying and loving, but Big Nick learns to appreciate (and pronounce) a good croissant, and that’s close enough.
Reintroduced clenching his finalized divorce papers in his teeth while taking a leak at the courthouse urinal before whipping his wedding ring at the floor, Big Nick isn’t in a great place. Maybe things didn’t work out with his wife because he was hung up on the one who got away; in this case, that’s Donnie Wilson (O’Shea Jackson Jr, equally natural in affable and down-to-business modes, a real live movie star), the elite getaway driver who made off with the loot last time around. Big Nick’s plan to track him down in diamond hub Nice might provide some closure, though as his FBI contact points out, the crooks have been operating far outside of American jurisdiction. As far as Los Angeles is concerned, they’re not bothering anyone, and so the one-man crusade to infiltrate their operation and take it down from within comes to look more like the desperate measure of someone in search of purpose and community. As he integrates himself into the so-called Panther Mafia, he starts to loosen up a little, helped along by a night at the club wherein a hash-and-MDMA high leads to an apology to a former Yugoslavian for Operation Allied Force and a cathartic chant of “FUCK NATO!”
The tentative coupling between Big Nick and Donnie, their bond strengthened over a mutual disclosure of backstory at one of the late-night shawarma spots dishing up Italy’s finest after-hours cuisine, carries a run time tacking four more minutes on to the justified bloat of its predecessor. That’s how Gudegast can get away with long-windedness that threatens to turn this into a looser sort of hangout picture, as well as a script structure that’s mostly preamble to the main event, the elaborate multi-phase job occupying the film’s last hour. The technical diligence and conceptual novelty on display during the boost uphold a high standard of excellence, its most inspired sequence played like a nerve-shredding game of red-light-green-light. Believably portraying expertise requires some measure of the same behind the camera, and the attentive, inventive Gudegast can keep pace with his subjects.
As a mid-budget, meat-and-potatoes-action studio release, there’s something pleasingly anomalous and 90s-retro about Big Nick and Donnie’s last tango in the Côte d’Azur, but the film’s chief virtues – elegant and spatially coherent camera choreography, Butler getting his groove on as Big Nick gets his back, the furtive intimacies shared by alpha males – are timeless. Even if Big Nick was not constantly addressing Donnie as “Fräulein” for no reason in particular, the subtext that these two cherish each other would be apparent, all but explicitly laid out in a monologue from Donnie about the “weird symbiosis” between criminals and law enforcement. Never mind that the final scenes resemble the ending of Carol as much as the legendary diner reckoning from Heat; the chemistry between Butler and Jackson as two bulky bulldogs staving off loneliness by playing little games with one another announces the true content of the film loud and clear. The ensemble decamps to the Riviera to steal precious jewels, only to discover that the most precious jewel of all is the homoerotically charged frenemies they made along the way.
Den of Thieves 2: Pantera is out in US cinemas now and in the UK at a later date
