Scots don’t really participate in any of this week’s St George’s Day malarkey, but there are many, many devout followers in the path of St. Gerard, ie oor Gerry Butler, whose creation myth reads as follows …’and the people of Scotland rose up and said; we need a hero, and not some weasly posh boy hero, but a right proper gravel-voiced, lantern-jawed deep blue burly hero we can all get behind and that. And Lo, it came to pass that Gerry Butler came unto the world and there was great rejoicing. And now, a full quarter century of Gerry Butler films have come to pass, top films like 300, Law Abiding Citizen, Gods of Egypt and Plane, and there was great merriment and appreciation amongst the followers of Gerard. But the people grew weary and said; speak unto us about the 2018 thriller Den of Thieves, Gerry, can you no go ‘nother wan like that? And lo, it came to pass that Den of Thieves: Pantera went direct to Amazon Prime in the UK as a matter of urgency so the people could see Gerry Butler in the comfort of their own homes, and there was great rejoicing.’
Although the title of this sequel isn’t actually a reference to the wife of rock legend Jon Mikl Thor, Den of Thieves: Pantera was a US number one movie back in January, leaving us in the UK and Scots in particular deep in anticipation for several months about seeing Gerry return as gangster cop and obsessive hunter ‘Big Nick’ O’Brien, with O’Shea Jackson Jr, aka 50 Cent returning as his prey, ‘heist addict’ Donnie Wilson. The milieu is roughly the same, with Deputy Sheriff O’Brien kinda on leave from the LAPD and still chasing down the loot from the Federal Reserve heist featured in the first film. That shakedown involves, guess what, another heist, so we’re off to Europe and a diamond vault at the World Diamond Center in Nice, France, although the action was filmed on the more manageable Canary Islands. Donnie has a new crew called The Panthers, and the tone is a little more light-hearted than last time around, but it’s basically more of the same; busting big-time crime is a Michael Mann-ly manner.
‘I speak English,’ says O’Brien, but he’s got more in his locker than that; he smokes indoors and out like a ‘Marlboro Man’, and drains Pepsi cans for the sweet sugar content. He’s a throwback who reads girlie mags in public and has a stramash/punch-up with a broken hand-drier in his opening scene; you can’t say Butler doesn’t have a sense of humour, and his cheery smile for Nice passport control is a meme wrapped and ready to go. The Den of Thieves movies explore a grey area where we don’t know just how far O’Brien is prepared to go to make his collar; too far isn’t far enough as O’Brien smokes hashish and pixie-dust cigarettes in nightclubs, bonds with Wilson over drunken e-scooter accidents and generally finds common ground with the criminals he’s supposedly tracking down.
Can a tiger change his stripes? O’Brien has the local gendarmerie in tow, and with the heist crew sporting the names of various Euro-beers (Amstel, Becks, Corona) Den of Thieves 2 is very much a bro’s bromance right down to the bigboy Audi vs Porsche car chase; a ‘gay cruise’ is how O’Brien tells people he met Wilson. This is a deliberately languorous (at 144 minutes) but highly enjoyable old-school copshow, with Butler and Jackson enjoying their repartee and enough action for writer and director Christian Gudegast to stretch his legs. If nothing else, the open ended ending gives Butler another franchise for his bulging G-Base portfolio of ongoing projects; the gallus Gerry is a Scottish national treasure for a reason, and the Den of Theives movies are Exhibit A in that case.
Den of Thieves: Pantera is streaming exclusively on Prime Video 25 April 2025.
Thanks for access to Signature Entertainment.
