Ranking Every 2025 Movie: Den Of Thieves 2: Pantera
I didn't really like the first Den Of Thieves. It was a movie that wasn't a lot of fun and didn't seem to know who it wanted to succeed. I went into Den Of Thieves 2: Pantera dreading this. The best part of the first one, Pablo Schreiber, isn't even in the sequel.
So I was pleasantly surprised to see that this is the rare case where the sequel is quite a bit better than the original.
Don't get me wrong. Den Of Thieves 2 is not a great movie. It's not even a good one. But it does deliver on the fun, stupid action that the first one promised. It was much less conflicted than the first one and seemed to walk away from the darkness that the first one tried to pull off. I felt like this tried much less to be Heat or The Town and instead have more of an The Italian Job feel.
Another reason this movie works better than the first is Gerard Butler. I always thought of Butler as a store brand Russell Crowe. He doesn't have the acting chops to pull off brooding. But he is charming enough to be funny and work well playing off O'Shea Jackson (who is also returning for the sequel). In this, they have a bromance that was pretty enjoyable. It's not Lethal Weapon Danny Glover/Mel Gibson chemistry, but it's pretty funny watching these guys just hang out. They have a casual and natural rapport. The best parts of this movie are when they are just shooting the shit.
I even liked the action sequences more this time around. I loved the premise of robbing the Federal Reserve in the first one but in practicality, it didn't work and relied on an insane amount of coincidences. This took out a lot of the mental heavy lifting that the movie wasn't capable to handle and replaced it with a cool car chase. Having this take place in Europe and using the location really effectively helped a ton.
Don't get me wrong. I can't recommend this to a general audience. It's a pretty dumb movie but it's also far from terrible. Having said that, there also isn't another true action movie in theaters right now. Also, if you liked the first one, this should be a must watch.
Grade: C+
2025 Movies
1. The Damned
2. Den Of Thieves 2: Pantera