“Den of Thieves 2”: Stealing from the Best

When “Den of Thieves” came out in 2018, it sparked a fair amount of debate among folks who enjoy watching crime movies. Some belittled the flick as “meathead ‘Heat,’” blatantly ripping off the Michael Mann playbook down to the electronica soundtrack and the intricate robberies, albeit with a heftier dose of macho posturing. Others defended it as flawed but entertaining, especially Gerard Butler’s willingness to chew every bit of available scenery as a crooked cop hunting down the heist crew led by Pablo Schreiber’s Ray. 

It’s not like we get a lot of decent heist films anymore, a friend told me at the time. We have to take what we can get, even if they’re copycats.

Except I couldn’t see past all the bits snipped wholesale from Mann. If memory serves, my grumbling started seconds into the film’s opening armored-truck heist and rose to a faint scream two hours later, just as Ray’s crew pulled off a successful bank robbery only to find themselves embroiled in a running gunfight against the cops. Sure, heist movies are notorious for following similar plot beats, but this was ridiculous.

(If you’re going to borrow from “Heat” while maintaining the pretense of originality, you can’t do better than the French film “Braqueuers,” which also lifts many of Mann’s tropes—armored car robbery! electronica! thieves with existential angst!—but does so with a certain Gallic joie. Plus, Sami Bouajila is nearly as cool a customer as De Niro.)

So when Netflix told me that “Den of Thieves 2” was available for streaming after a successful theatrical run, why did I click ‘Play’? I guess we don’t get a lot of heist films anymore, and we have to take what’s offered. And these days, when I’m generally watching movies in 20-minute bursts over the course of a week, I find I’m willing to give a lot more leeway when it comes to quality, or whether a script cribs too much from the greats. 

And make no mistake about it: “Den of Thieves 2” gleefully cribs from the greats. The action in this one has shifted to southern France, where Donnie (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), the sole survivor of the first movie’s heist crew, is planning to rob a heavily guarded diamond exchange in Nice. Butler’s Nick O’Brien, his career spiraling the drain in LA, travels to Europe, tracks Donnie down, and bulldozes his way onto Donnie’s new, diamond-snatching crew. The cop turns gangster—or does he?

If you’ve watched more than one European crime film made over the past century, you know what’s coming next: inevitable double-crosses, seemingly insurmountable complications during the heist planning, and a tense robbery sequence where everything seems on the verge of spinning out of control at any moment. There’s a heavy debt here to “Rififi,”but also, if you’re feeling generous, much older films like “Operation Amsterdam.” As the characters shuttled between France and Italy, I also picked up a hint of “The Good Thief,”one of my favorites, in which Nick Nolte and his intrepid crew of criminals cross that same border while plotting to steal a selection of the world’s most famous paintings from a casino. 

“Den of Thieves 2” never rises above its influences, but in a certain way, that’s OK. Given how we’re thoroughly mired in remix/remake culture right now, we perhaps have to give a certain degree of credit to a film that confidently borrows from a dozen European heist movies without mimicking any single one too heavily. That fact alone makes it better than the original “Den of Thieves,” which could never fully escape the gravity well of “Heat,” and suffered accordingly. 

In any case, it may be worth your time. Sometimes we have to take what we can get.