By Keith Walther | RLGR
With the first film achieving mediocre results in both the box office and critic reviews, it’s a head scratcher as to why a sequel was created. “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera” desperately wants the success of well-known heist movie franchises like “Ocean’s Eleven” or “The Fast and the Furious,” but lacking the talent on both sides of the camera makes it come up dreadfully short. Slow pacing and a bevy of unnecessary scenes drag out an already too long movie that relegates the production to another forgettable wannabe.
After narrowly escaping the Federal Reserve heist, Donnie Wilson (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) is back at it, pulling off a perfectly planned score with his Panther mafia team, stealing a rare pink diamond. Obsessed with tracking down the criminal who eluded him, Big Nick (Gerard Butler) has gone rogue, leaving his badge behind and the politics that come with it. Big Nick closes in on Donnie, finally getting the drop on the elusive thief in Nice, France.
However, instead of taking him into custody, he asks to join Donnie’s crew to pull off an impossible heist in the famed diamond district. Donnie and crew readily accept Big Nick’s weak story of his departure from law enforcement, immediately trusting the outsider into their inner circle. In addition to meticulous planning, the team will need a bit of luck to successfully pull off this robbery, avoiding local law enforcement as well as other interested parties who don’t have their well-being at heart.
This is the second film Christian Gudegast has directed, the first one being “Den of Thieves” in 2018. Like he did with the first installment, he also wrote the screenplay, so the continuity of the story remains intact. While having the same filmmaker and returning stars for the sequel is always a bonus, especially for action movies, the first movie was unremarkable in every way. Christian follows the heist film formula and simply moves the location to Europe to offer that different scenery for the sequel. When the outcomes are so predictable and known, it creates a routine filmgoing experience that no amount of window dressing can overcome.
Christian does a decent job of crafting the action sequences with quality cinematography even though they’re few and far between. He incorporates way too many scenes that do not contribute to the storyline in any significant way, like when characters go out for a night of partying. It’s almost as if Christian was trying to manufacture those same moments of levity that “The Fast and the Furious” movies incorporated. Instead of adding entertainment value, he slows the pacing of the storyline to a point viewers groan with exasperation. By the time the telegraphed climax makes an appearance, the audience is too bored to care.
Once again, Gerard Butler plays the same character he plays in almost every one of his action movies. He’s that one-dimensional, tough, no-nonsense type of guy with a New York style attitude that will sooner pull a gun on a bad guy than interrogate him. Sure, the dialogue is nothing to write home about, but he offers no depth to his character, making his performance as bland as the movie itself. Next up for Butler is the live action version of “How to Train Your Dragon.”
O’Shea Jackson Jr., son of rapper Ice Cube, has had only one complete performance in a starring role, and that was when he played his father in “Straight Outta Compton” back in 2015. Since then, he hasn’t shown an ability to command the screen, which shows up once again in both “Den of Thieves” movies. His lack of energy in the role is noticeable as he simply goes through the motions without feeling or even inflection in his line delivery. If a biopic film is ever made about Ben Stein, O’Shea should be a frontrunner for the role.
The only thing of consequence being stolen in “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera” is your time and money if you choose to see it. This is an uneventful motion picture of a sequel that no one craved in the first place. This movie is only good as background noise from the comfort of your home while you have other distractions to keep you busy while it’s playing.
This movie earns:
