The movie event of 2025 so far for a certain type of dude just landed on Netflix: Not long after the original film ruled the streaming services charts, Den of Thieves: Pantera has come home. That there’s any hype about the sequel’s Netflix debut underscores exactly what kind of a challenge it faces as the follow-up to a surprise hit and fan fave: The element of surprise is gone. Den of Thieves was the first of several Gerard Butler vehicles to elicit a reaction of “hey, this is better than I expected!”; it was a dumb cop movie that was also a bit smarter and more textured than it really needed to be. This means that Den of Thieves 2 has something to live up to.
In some ways, the sequel delivers: Writer-director Christian Gudegast doesn’t just rehash the original film. He kinda-sorta does a Fast & Furious thing, where instead of placing cop “Big Nick” O’Brien (Butler) and scheming heist impresario Donnie (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) back at odds for the entire runtime, the movie teams them up. That’s not to say there aren’t conflicts or even potential double-crosses, but Gudegast realizes that it’s probably more fun to see his stars together than apart. The first movie may have ripped off Heat, but Butler and Jackson aren’t quite at that Pacino/De Niro level where they can perpetually carry their own storylines.
Yet like Heat, a good portion of what makes Den of Thieves: Pantera work as well as it does is the accumulated onscreen history of its actors – or rather, of Butler, specifically. The likable Jackson is still relatively early in his movie career, and the film’s supporting cast of European white guys doesn’t really pop. Butler, though, is in his glory as a disgraced Big Nick. (Why, exactly, Donnie getting away at the end of Den of Thieves would have ruined Big Nick’s life and career is not really made clear. His personal life was already a mess, and the nature of Donnie’s clever plan in the first movie was to tie up loose ends so that no one would necessarily be looking for him. For that matter, even if the perpetrator of a big heist gets away, does one cop really get singled out for it?)
Part of what once made Butler seem like such a poor man’s action hero for so long was his raffish bluntness; he projected all of the “old school” man’s-man bullshit that’s supposed to characterize on-screen tough guys, without the physical grace you get from a Jason Statham or Keanu Reeves. But the Big Nick character, who started off leaning into Butler’s rough-hewn persona, has come to unlock something in him – something that almost passes for soulfulness. Even as Big Nick imposes himself on Donnie’s crew or inflicts his American-isms on his French cop counterparts in Pantera, there’s something rascally, even kind of warm about him. In one of the movie’s best scenes, Butler and Jackson get drunk, get a snack, and have what passes in the Den of Thieves world for a heart to heart.
None of this quite crosses into Fast & Furious-style sentimentality, which is good, because the movie is not as well-equipped to pull that off as a long-running series with the courage of its own bold absurdities. But there’s something touching about seeing a bearded, dissolute Butler show a little sensitivity, even as he maintains his Ugly American bluster. (Maybe that’s Butler’s Scottish charm escaping once he’s safely landed in Europe.) If the Den of Thieves series continues – and Pantera very much seems to assume that it will – Butler may reach Keanu-level lovability yet.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.
The post ‘Den of Thieves 2’ Hits Netflix: Get Ready For A Weirdly Cuddly Gerard Butler appeared first on Decider.
