When it was released in 2018, Den of Thieves was called, somewhat disparagingly, “dirtbag Heat.” And that pithy descriptor certainly wasn’t wrong — the crime thriller followed a career thief (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) whose elaborate heists catch the attention of a Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department detective (Gerard Butler) with marital problems. Like the Michael Mann classic, Den of Thieves was a cat-and-mouse thriller between a criminal and a cop who had more in common than they would’ve liked to admit. But unlike Heat, Den of Thieves was inarguably, unashamedly, trashy.
The first Den of Thieves was released at the height of Gerard Butler’s reign as B-movie king, amid a string of sweaty actioners like London Has Fallen, Gods of Egypt, and Geostorm, and is very much cut from the same cloth as those films. It’s mean, it’s grimy, and it’s packed to the gills with testosterone. To be honest, it’s a mostly middling crime thriller that might’ve been destined to be forgotten at the bottom of the Walmart bargain bin, until it was announced that director Christian Gudegast was planning a sequel with both Butler and Jackson Jr. Seven years later, that sequel has finally emerged — and it’s a shockingly good time.
