There's an entire subgenre of modern crime movies you might call "Heat Rashes" -- those heist thrillers that worship at the altar of Michael Mann's 1995 stone-cold classic. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and the best and most admiring of these Mann-handlers is, by a huge margin, 2018's Den of Thieves. In the De Niro corner, you've got Pablo Schreiber as the leader of a bank-robbery crew who's dreaming the impossible dream: ripping off the Federal Reserve in Los Angeles. Taking on the Pacino role, Gerard Butler is the one calling the shots for the sheriff department's Major Crimes Unit, a morally gray law-enforcement gang he runs with a fuck-you panache that would put Vic Mackey to shame. When Schreiber isn't whipping his cohorts -- which includes Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, O'Shea Jackson Jr. and Evan Jones, a.k.a. Cheddar Bob from 8 Mile -- into shape and Butler isn't dealing with domestic strife on the homefront, they're engaged in a he-man dick-measuring contest; the equivalent of their diner conversation is a dialogue-less sequence set in a gun range. Freudian analysts, start your engines!
It helped immensely that writer-director Christian Gudegast not only seemed to have studied that earlier totem of tough-guy cinema but knew exactly how to hug the curves during the action sequences, notably a climactic showdown that combined Heat's ballistic street fight with Sicario's cat-and-mouse game in border-stop traffic. It's an impeccably curated, high-grade pulp mix-tape that succeeds best when it's paying homage to one specific film, only to become diluted by a last-act decision to try aping The Usual Suspects as well. Full disclosure: We still rewatch this at least once a year. And when Den ended with one of the few surviving characters mentioning something about the European diamond market, a million pairs of fans' fingers were crossed in the hope that maybe, just maybe, we'd one day get a sequel.
And now that sequel has finally arrived, and we wished we'd read the fine print a little closer in this particular monkey-paw-wish negotiation. Gudegast's Den of Thieves 2: Pantera -- the subtitle refers to the name of a task force looking into a massive heist, and spoiler alert, "Walk" isn't on the soundtrack -- does make good on the jewel-heist tease, kicking off with a well-organized boost of rare diamonds that's just arrived at a Belgian airport. It seems that Donnie Wilson (Jackson) is leading a crew of his own, which includes a French thief named Jovanna (Evin Ahmad), a Serbian crook named Slavko (Gomorrah's Salvatore Esposito), and a whole lotta Balkan thugs. Back in L.A., "Big Nick" O'Brien (Butler) is still stewing over the fact that the money from the Fed job was never recovered. (In fact, the stolen millions were never even registered as being stolen, but that's a whole other story.) He gets a hunch that the Antwerp job might have been done by his M.I.A. main suspect, however, so thanks to some vague favor-trading with that F.B.I. agent for the first film, he somehow gets international jurisdiction. Once again, we got ourselves a good ol' fashioned cop-vs.-criminal-mastermind standoff!
His timing is good, since Donnie is pretending he's a French diamond broker and running a long-game con against the World Diamond Center in Nice. He's also accidentally stolen a giant gemstone owned by a Sicilian Mafia bigwig, however, and needs to retrieve it from his liason's safety deposit box in the building's vault or else. Big Nick tracks him down on the Riviera, and says that in exchange for not taking Donnie in -- or putting a bullet through his skill, because y'know how corrupt cops operate -- he wants in on the job as well. Being a rogue sheriff in the City of Angels doesn't pay well, so why not get some of that sweet, sweet illicit loot?
Long story short, things don't quite go as smoothly as planned. Having established the foundation for a potential franchise with the original Den of Thieves, Gudegast stops going to the Heat well and mines a host of old-school European heist flicks, making the most of both the exotic locales and the Fort Knox-style set-up of the Center. It's not a knock to say that the most elaborate set piece here is also its biggest example of meta-thievery: an extended, showstopping sequence involving the gang's infiltration, penetration and escape from the WDC, done with military-style precision and more than a little pickpocketing of the genre's Rosetta stone, Rififi (1955). Given how airtight this whole affair is presented, you'd think that the writer-director and his crew were as expert at their jobs as Wilson and "the Panthers," as the thieves are called, are at theirs.
It's everything else around this centerpiece that's the problem. Pantera tries to build off of the legacy of that first glorious slab of pulp cinema without replicating it -- Gudegast isn't interested in mounting a copy of a copy. But a lot of the pleasure of watching the filmmaker and his cast do their exquisite cover version is gone, replaced only by some clumsy buddy-comedy elements (was anyone begging to see Butler and Wilson to race each on electric scooters while high on Ecstasy?) and a lot of action-movie hot air. Far be it from us to say that watching Butler do his cock-of-the-walk bad-cop act isn't fun, especially when he and Ahmad start generating their own heat. Ditto seeing Jackson unleashing his patented "Aw, come on, man!" facial expression while gamely trying to master a fake French accent. And kudos for that car chase scene through the tunnels of Sardinia!
It's just that the original Den of Thieves reveled in being the baddest B movie on the block, happily hardboiling in its own Angeleno crime thriller juices. This sequel tries to expand into tonier genre horizons and gin up a sort of Den-iverse mythology, yet simply ends up playing tourist in smaller, more previously colonized territory. Congratulations on your European adventure. Now quit trying to be the next Fast & Furious and get back to those mean streets, please.
