The globe-trotting caper “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera,” a sequel to the schlocky 2018 action film, is a convoluted movie bolstered by entertaining set pieces.
In “Pantera,” Los Angeles sheriff Big Nick (Gerard Butler) travels to Nice, France, to find the expert thief Donnie Wilson (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), whom he suspects was the mastermind behind the Federal Reserve Bank robbery that unfolded in the original movie. This time, Nick tracks Donnie down not to arrest him but to join his criminal enterprise, the Panthers, and stage a heist of the impenetrable World Diamond Center.
Nick and Donnie’s sudden friendship gives the writer-director Christian Gudegast’s film a shaggy hangout movie feel not unlike “Fast & Furious” (2009). Cop and robber party together, share their pained back stories and unoriginal jokes about French cuisine and evade a local police squad known as Pantera. A tacked-on subplot — a Sardinian mobster demands that Donnie return a stolen diamond — and the break-in’s detailed planning push this macho film along.
In its second hour the film locks in. Robbers methodically snake through the diamond center under a time crunch. A thrilling getaway car chase through the mountains recalls Michael Mann’s “Heat” as the camera closes in on Nick, hanging from Donnie’s car window and shooting vengeful former accomplices.
“Den of Thieves 2: Pantera” isn’t groundbreaking, but it delivers what it promises: lovable scoundrels trading bullets and traversing borders.
Den of Thieves 2: Pantera
Rated R for violence and language. Running time: 2 hours 24 minutes. In theaters.
