‘Den Of Thieves 2: Pantera’: Review

Dir/scr: Christian Gudegast. US. 2024. 144mins 

Writer-director Christian Gudegast switches up the formula for his follow-up to 2018 heist hit Den Of Thieves, but the changes ultimately rob this sequel of the elements that made the first film so winning. Gerard Butler’s tough-guy policeman and O’Shea Jackson Jr.’s wily thief join forces this time for an action thriller that works on a broader canvas, jumping to Belgium, France and Italy. Yet those grander ambitions only amplify the material’s macho ludicrousness at the expense of the original’s superb set pieces and drama.

Does not possess its predecessors’ B-movie ingenuity

Pantera opens in the US on January 10, almost exactly seven years after Den Of Thieves collected $80.5 million worldwide against a relatively modest budget. Butler’s 2023 picture Plane also grossed $74.5 million in the same January slot, and the hopes are that Pantera will appeal to an audience craving an action offering in the midst of awards-season prestige dramas and family flicks. 

Still seething about being duped by Donnie (Jackson Jr), who was the secret architect behind the brazen robbery of the Federal Reserve at the centre of Den Of Thieves, Los Angeles detective Nick (Butler) has seen his life hit rock bottom. His wife has left him due to his infidelity, and he has been kicked off the force. Realising that Donnie escaped the US and is now operating in Europe, Nick tracks down the thief, declaring that he is tired of fighting criminals — and wants to be part of Donnie’s next big heist. 

With Den Of Thieves, Gudegast wore his affection for Michael Mann’s Heat on his sleeve, and the 2018 film’s stripped-down action, gritty L.A. settings and swaggering cops-and-robbers plot were expertly executed, even if the proceedings were noticeably derivative. For Pantera, though, the writer-director (who also worked on the screenplay for Butler’s 2016 film London Has Fallen) shifts his cinematic reference points, going for something more in the vein of Mission: Impossible or James Bond. Den Of Thieves’ white-knuckle car chases and ferocious gun battles give way to a more cosmopolitan crime drama built around Donnie’s plan to break into Nice’s seemingly impenetrable World Diamond Center.  

The European locales may give Pantera a more international flair — the film actually shot on the Spanish island of Tenerife — but they deprive this sequel of Den Of Thieves’ lived-in texture and rugged immediacy. And although it is initially intriguing to see Nick and Donnie put aside their differences to form a fragile truce, their wary partnership does not generate much spark.

Butler, who was quite convincing in Den Of Thieves as an amoral cop who aggressively operates outside the law, is less galvanising here as Nick gets seduced by the criminal lifestyle. The actor’s smart-aleck rapport with Jackson, which is meant to give the sequel a little buddy-comedy, is strained, and Nick’s flirtations with the heist queenpin, the all-business Jovanna (Evin Ahmad), don’t add much to the story. What lent Den Of Thieves its electricity was Gudegast’s careful attention to both the good and bad guys, creating fascinating characters on each side. But Pantera only focuses on the criminals, and the thieves and heavies around Nick and Donnie — who will eventually include dangerous members of the Italian mafia — are largely colourless.

Jackson comes more to the fore in this sequel, his scheming Donnie no longer considered a lowly getaway driver but, in fact, a brilliant criminal mastermind. In Pantera, he exudes a far more confident air in keeping with his character’s true demeanour, capably providing the necessary savoir-faire. The problem is that the heist that Donnie and Jovanna have cooked up is fairly reminiscent of the kind concocted in Mission: Impossible and Ocean’s pictures. Editor Roberth Nordh and composer Kevin Matley — both new to the franchise — do solid, competent work, but Pantera does not possess its predecessors’ B-movie ingenuity or ability to transform a familiar narrative into something lean and mean. 

As with the original film, Pantera boasts a third-act twist, although this one will be much easier for audiences to guess. What is especially disappointing is that the revelation might have been more worthwhile as a central tension throughout the film, rather than as an anticlimactic final plot point. It’s yet another disappointment in a sequel to a finely-crafted first feature about a seemingly perfect heist. Gudegast learns the hard way that returning to the proverbial scene of the crime usually spells disaster.