The bad guys in “Den of Thieves” (2018) are scarier than most horror-movie villains … and that’s nothing compared to the good guys. In fact, Gerard Butler’s cop Nick tells his unwilling informant Donnie (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) that he, Nick, is the bad guy. And even after writer-director Christian Gudegast’s full 140 minutes of musclebound, gun-cocking, F-bomb-spewing thrills, my opinion of Nick didn’t change. Thank god he’s ostensibly on the side of truth and justice, I guess.
Cops and robbers
This is one of those movies where, it’s said, we don’t know who to root for. But (within the movie’s context) I was rooting for the bank robbers, led by Pablo Schreiber’s Merrimen. And not only because of their absurd audacity of aiming for the Los Angeles Federal Reserve branch (even after seeing the spectacular failure of a similar hit in “Die Hard with a Vengeance”).
After the thieves’ opening theft of an armored van, Nick notes that they didn’t kill anyone who didn’t pull a gun on them, even people who could identify them; they operate with military-style protocols. There’s honor among these thieves.
“Den of Thieves” (2018)
Director: Christian Gudegast
Writers: Christian Gudegast, Paul T. Scheuring
Stars: Gerard Butler, Pablo Schreiber, O’Shea Jackson Jr.
Uber-alpha male Nick, meanwhile, is terrifying, calling to mind Al Pacino in “Heat,” although with a grizzled Butlerian flavor to the awkward encounters. We sense how Donnie feels caught between the two sides; in addition to the law-enforcement muscle Nick wields, he has a magnetically nasty pull. Butler can also play good guys — as seen in “Greenland,” for instance – but you can’t imagine it here. (That film will get a sequel, and so will the subject at hand: “Den of Thieves: Pantera” hits theaters Jan. 10.)
Through sheer force of performance, Nick is the main character as he leads the cops’ counterstrikes against Merrimen’s robbers. But I always had a vague sense that Donnie matters quite a bit, too, not merely as a plot and exposition driver.
O’Shea, it turns out, gives one of the most appropriate flat acting turns I’ve seen in a while. We meet Donnie when he’s a mild-mannered bartender, and O’Shea doesn’t divert much from that mildness even when Donnie’s life is in danger.
Plot holes mostly paved over
“Den of Thieves” came out around the same time as “Baby Driver,” also about a supremely skilled getaway driver, and this is a minority opinion, but I find Donnie and “Den of Thieves” more interesting, albeit not more stylish.
Gudegast had written other Butler-fronted B-actioners, but this marks his first time as a director (He’ll also helm the sequel). The action is sparse but consistently good, with a shootout amid stalled traffic being the climactic highlight. (It’s also another instance that makes me not like Nick. He’s putting tons of innocent motorists in danger.) Though ostensibly set in L.A., the film is shot in Atlanta, and Gudegast and cinematographer Terry Stacey make sure to soak up the city’s well-worn, barren industrial areas as the enemies shoot it out.
This is an above-average but disposable actioner until the coda, when it paves over some of my plot-hole concerns and gives us a new perspective on a key character. “Den of Thieves” often operates in a filmic world of conveniences, but it creates verisimilitude via sheer tension and occasional brazenness, like when Merrimen and Nick meet in a domestic setting. The tension is relentless from the start of the Federal Reserve heist through to the conclusion – and yes, it’s because we want the thieves to get away with it.
Well, I shouldn’t speak for everyone; the good guys have some merits. But it does bug me how – in the film’s world and apparently in reality (as an opening crawl tells us) – a bank is targeted every 42 minutes in Los Angeles, “the bank robbery capital of the world.” C’mon, in this modern age of security, it’s pretty pathetic that the risk-reward factor in robbing a bank is so favorable to thieves.
Maybe “Den of Thieves” is a wake-up call to security professionals? Nah, of course it isn’t. This is, at the end of the day, a not-quite-realistic action movie. But the chill Butler’s performance sends down my spine remains real, and he just might pull me into the sequel.
A second opinion: Shaune’s review of “Den of Thieves.”