Returning to probably his most memorable and most testosterone fuelled character as Big Nick is Gerard Butler in a sequel to 2018’s Den of Thieves 2 : Pantera. And like an aspiring female rapper at a P Diddy freak off, he’s not in a good place. Still smarting from having failed to arrest Donnie Wilson (O’Shea Jackson Jr) the real mastermind of the gang in the first film he’s found himself demoted, divorced and disgruntled. It’s only when he hears about a diamond robbery in Antwerp that he recognises it as the handiwork of Wilson. It sparks his drive at another attempt to get his man and he persuades his boss to assign to Pantera, not the heavy metal band but a French police unit tasked to take down a gang of jewellery thieves that Wilson has joined to fence the pink diamond he has stolen in Antwerp which in itself is a front for the gang to burgle a diamond centre. For Wilson the pink diamond is the start of his troubles because it belonged to the mafia headed up by ‘the octopus’ who orders his own men to get that gem back.
But here Big Nick manages to convince Wilson that his police career is over and he wants to make serious money and join the gang in their diamond heist. It’s as convincing a line as, ‘I haven’t got any change’, or ‘I was stuck on traffic’ or worse still, ‘I’d taken Beatrice to a Pizza Express in Woking’. What develops from here is a sort of bromance between the two that sees them swopping stories about their respective backgrounds and how they got started in their own particular line of work. So with the pressure on to return the pink diamond to the mafia boss and also to pull off the heist in the heavily guarded diamond centre, the heat is on.
Much like the original film Den of Thieves 2 : Pantera runs at epic length and would have benefitted from trimming but there’s more humour here added to the bromance bonhomie along with Butler’s Big Nick, endearing in his gruffness, and matched by an excellent last hour where the heist takes place and a brilliantly choreographed car chase between a Porsche (albeit electric) and an Audi that is the stuff of Bond films. And much like the first film this sequel also owes much to Michel Mann’s masterpiece, ‘Heat’ with its cop / villain dynamic and cool blue neon lit, synth scored scene with cars zipping through the hairpin bends of the Cote D’Azur. It’s a sequel that deserved a big screen release with the end setting itself up for an inevitable third film. And we ‘re here for it.
related feature : Den of Thieves 2 : Pantera
related feature : ‘Patriots Day’ – real life police officer talks about the shoot out with the Boston Marathon bombers
Here’s the Den of Thieves 2 : Pantera ……
Den of Thieves: Pantera is streaming exclusively on Prime Video 25th April
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