What’s It About
Lawman “Big Nick” O’Brien gets embroiled in the treacherous and unpredictable world of diamond thieves as he pursues career criminal Donnie Wilson to Europe.
MOVIESinMO REVIEW
“Den of Thieves 2: Pantera” is a lackluster sequel that struggles to justify its existence in the action-thriller landscape of 2025. Released seven years after the original, this bloated 144-minute film continues the story of LA detective “Big Nick” O’Brien (Gerard Butler) and his obsessive pursuit of clever thief Donnie Wilson (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), but fails to recapture any of the original’s modest charms. The story picks up shortly after the first film, where Donnie orchestrated an ingenious heist of the Federal Reserve that was so well-executed, the authorities didn’t even realize they’d been robbed. Now living with the fallout of that embarrassment, Nick’s life has completely unraveled – he’s divorced, perpetually hungover, and burning with revenge. After getting a tip about Donnie’s whereabouts, Nick tracks him to Paris, where he’s reinvented himself as a gem dealer under the alias Jean-Jacques Dyallo. Donnie has partnered with a Balkan crime organization known as the Panthers, who are plotting to hijack a diamond shipment from Johannesburg. The movie’s biggest issues stem from its glacial pacing and underdeveloped characters. The first 40 minutes feel like an endurance test, filled with meandering conversations that do little to advance the plot or develop the characters. While the 2018 original wasn’t groundbreaking, it at least managed to create engaging personalities and maintain a decent level of suspense. This time around, everyone feels like they’re reading from a particularly uninspired script – especially the Panthers crew. Their leader Jovanna (Evin Ahmad), nicknamed Cleopatra, is supposedly a sophisticated criminal mastermind, but comes across more like an Instagram influencer who took a wrong turn into organized crime. Her right-hand man Dragan (Orli Shuka) is repeatedly described as the group’s intellectual, though his primary characteristic seems to be a reasonable distrust of newcomers. The plot takes several credibility-stretching turns that strain audience patience. After locating Donnie at a Parisian café, Nick somehow convinces the notoriously selective Panthers to welcome him into their operation by claiming he’s financially desperate and wants in on the heist. It’s a premise that requires Olympic-level suspension of disbelief – these supposed criminal masterminds readily accepting a former LA detective into their ranks. The film also wastes time on pointless subplots, including an awkward scene where Nick sleeps with a stripper named Holly to gather intelligence, only to be blackmailed with a recording of the encounter. Even the action sequences, which should be the film’s saving grace, feel derivative and uninspired. The heist scenes borrow heavily from better films in the genre without adding any fresh perspectives or innovative twists. The movie’s attempts at international flavor through various accents become unintentionally comedic, particularly when Jackson attempts to convince viewers he’s a sophisticated gem dealer from the Ivory Coast – his French-African accent wavering wildly between continents, sometimes within the same scene. The film was primarily shot in Sardinia, though it never really takes advantage of its exotic locations to create memorable set pieces or atmospheric tension. While this could have had a better chance at being the next Ocean’s 11 type of franchise, writer-director Christian Gudegast seems to be aiming for a “Fast & Furious”-style franchise expansion, complete with globe-trotting adventures and increasingly complex heists. However, “Den of Thieves 2” proves that not every moderately successful action film needs to spawn a franchise. Despite the ending’s obvious setup for another sequel, the film leaves viewers with little reason to care about where these characters might go next. The biggest theft in “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera” isn’t the diamond heist – it’s the 144 minutes it steals from viewers’ lives, promising thrills but delivering tedium. While Butler and Jackson do their best with the material they’re given, their chemistry from the first film gets lost in a maze of unconvincing plot twists and superficial character development. The movie serves as a reminder that sometimes, leaving well enough alone is the better part of valor in filmmaking.
OUR RATING – AN ACCENTED 5