It is 2025, and like last year’s long-in-gestation slate of sequels (Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, and Gladiator II), one of the first movies is the seven-year-in-gestation sequel to the 2018 actioner Den of Thieves is Den of Thieves 2: Pantera.
The original film centered around an elite unit of the LA County Sheriff’s Dept. headed by Gerard Butler’s Nick O’Brian and the state’s most successful bank robbery crew clash as the outlaws plan a seemingly impossible heist on the Federal Reserve Bank. Fairly successful the first time around, now Den of Thieves 2: Pantera arrived in theaters on January 10th through Lionsgate with returning Writer/Director Christian Gudegast. Returning are Gerard Butler, Meadow Williams, Michael Bisping, and O’Shea Jackson Jr. with Evin Ahmad (The Rain series, Snabba Cash series), Salvatore Esposito (Gomorrah series, The Perfect Dinner 2022), Swen Temmel (The Bay series, Cash Out 2024), Orli Shuka (All the Old Knives 2022, Gangs of London series), and Cristian Solimeno (The Glass Man 2011, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them 2016), among the list of new cast members.
Bordering on being a functioning alcoholic, still reeling from the divorce he caused, Big Nick is back on the hunt, this time in Europe, when he sees O’Shea Jackson Jr.’s Donnie, who got away after the LA bust and is now embroiled in the treacherous world of diamond thieves and the infamous Panther mafia as they plot a massive heist of the world’s largest diamond exchange. But being fish out of water, they might be in over their heads.
The movie was shot in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, lending itself to some beautiful scenery and a change of pace from what everybody knows as LA. This helps with drama, even if the opening sequence practically mirrors the first one, just a different locale. This could easily get the movie dismissed before it gets out of the blocks…but there is more.
Butler slips back into Nick easily but ages, with more life baggage that, honestly, again, he put on himself in the first movie. Jackson Jr. looks to have packed on some weight the last time we saw Donnie. Donnie still has not learned his lesson from the first; in fact, he has gotten himself way in over his head this time…and in a foreign country…with a faction of its mafia, no doubt. All this is played straight.
Of course, there has to be some psychology that goes into the movie, or it would just be a mindless build-up to a third-act shoot-out. Fear not; there are themes to Den of Thieves 2: Pantera that revolve around the struggle against one’s true nature, like Nick being a cop and Donnie being an opportunist, albeit a dumb one, the blurred lines between good and evil with Nick not letting the specter of Donnie getting away haunt him and doing whatever it takes to get him, the corrupting influence of power for the same reason, and the idea that even when attempting to change, people often revert back to their ingrained behaviors with Nick and Donnie representing two sides of the same coin, who are constantly teetering on the edge of morality.
Thus far, Den of Thieves 2: Pantera has faired better than its predecessor with critics and the general public alike. With that in mind, according to Gerard Butler, there are plans to make a third Den. Of course, this hedges on how well Den of Thieves 2: Pantera does in the end. We will have to see. Aside from a wonky Shyamalan-esque end, Cryptic Rock gives Den of Thieves 2: Pantera 4 out of 5 stars.
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