Den of Thieves 2: Pantera (2025)
The score isn't settled.
Time for a sequel episode! We did the original a while back - honestly I forgot about most of the details, but I remember crime drama shenanigans, people being horrible family members, and a long Heat style gunfight chase at the end. It took me part of the way through tonights movie to remember that one character was even in the last movie, which was pretty funny - but with how I constantly forget things, it’ll be pretty amusing to figure out just how much it impacts the overall enjoyment and following of tonight’s flick. Get your sheriff badge out and wonder which side you want to be on, tonight we look at Den of Thieves 2.
We start off with an elaborate heist of a single package from a plane filled with stuff. We don’t know why, we don’t even know technically what is in it - but the crew pulls it off pretty flawlessly. We flash over to our cop from the first one deciding that the robbery sounds pretty faimliar and looking to get permission to go on a field trip - which he’s denied. It doesn’t stop him though, and he goes to meet up with the French police to check some things out. Meanwhile, our old bartender friend from the first movie enters the scene, playing at a diamond dealer looking to store his goods in France’s diamond district. It’s the safest place to store your diamonds - pretty much not going to get robbed ever - and of course the target for the current heist. Things are complicated when our out-of-district cop shows up into the mix, and even further complicated when we find out the item stolen at the start was a diamond heavily invested in by a very powerful mob boss named the Octopus. Drama, tension, and even a bit of a gunfight ensue.
Much like the last one, the focus here is a lot on the characters. Maybe not necessarily in character growth around the house - although there are plenty of character moments especially for our main two characters, I feel like at their core they are still rather much the same people despite what they may or may not have learned. That said, our main lawman does seem to get a bit softer around the edges perhaps by the end, and certainly gets to have plenty of internal turmoil that isn’t just brought about by a barely onscreen family this time. He’s still not a good person in that sense, but there are plenty of moments between him and our other lead that are effective at selling the feeling of them bonding. Most our other characters are pretty just “what they are” - complete with a not really romance romance option who wears some fiery dresses and serves as the computer person keeping tabs on everything from home base. Each person in the crew has a role, and they play it without too much complication.
The actors do a wonderful job here, and not just on the main crew side. There’s a wonderful moment when the place sees it’s been robbed where the head dude in charge of keeping things locked up beautifully sells the anguished look of things going wrong, and some of the other side actors also nail some deliveries and / or banter between themselves. If someone is supposed to look torn up about something mentally, you see it on screen without trouble. The budding bro-mance feeling between the two leads also has some stellar highlight moments, so I don’t feel like most people are going to find a whole lot to be complaining about in the acting department. I guess the worst part of it would be that some of the characters feeling generic bleeds into actor deliveries - it’s not bad, but it lacks any real feeling of gusto that makes them stand out from various other movies of the ilk.
Metting room
Costumes are good with a caveat - it’s all pretty modern stuff. Sure, the robbery suits have a little bit of flair, but nothing is so crazy it’s going to be pulling at your memory for the next three years. It’s the curse of making something believable - if you do your job too well, it won’t feel like your doing your job at all. Settings get to look pretty nice and different - but at the same time I imagine if someone were to live in France and see those sights all the time it’d fall into the same rut of “nothing too refreshing” as the costumes do. For the rest of us that aren’t going too crazy far from our homes, we get some pretty scenery shots as well as the expected interiors and building scenes we’d expect from a movie - including the “big garage planning area” of the crime team. Nothing particularly game changing, but nothing fun breaking either.
Props are around the block some. Most the movie is similar to the last - very drama and tension focused, not a whole lot of crazy Oceans Eleven shenanigans. We do get some interesting stuff here and then when it comes to the actual heist though, ranging from fancy visual distortion plastic to a literal gelato container being used to thwart heat sensors.It’s a fun mix of low and high tech, but without being as flashy and showy as laser grids and the likes. We also get another gunfight chase at the end, which shares it’s own little fun action beats - although I honestly feel like the ending scene from the first carried more of a impact with it’s on foot chase and so many other non-involved characters being involved in it. It’s still fun to watch though, and most the heist before it carries plenty enough tension that it isn’t necessarily unwanted either.
Audio does fine. Line deliveries are mostly well done, balancing is great. Admittedly, every time a different language is used I couldn’t speak to the deliveries, but people seem to be animated when things would be, so I still think it’s probably being done well - and the subtitles do a fine job of telling me what they are saying so I’m not left out of the loop. Admittedly, with how multilingual this movie is with it’s bouncing back and forth, some might get some whiplash, but I just found it kind of amusing and they even tie some of the language borders into some of the jokes, like with how the main cop mispronounces things like a “typical American.” As for thinking stuff, I think for the sake of spoiler interactions between people I’m going to leave this one blank - but you know what? It does have some pretty good stuff, and the actors doing a great job really helps sell it visually instead of just being someone dumping stuff like “how the real treasure is the friends we made along the way” line just getting word-for-word dumped in a family movie or something. Nuance can be a wonderful thing at times.
Meeting room alternative
All in all a good movie. I feel mostly if you liked the first one you’ll like this one. If you haven’t seen it, you could still watch this one and not be too lost - really just the history between our two leads and any extra baggage that brings to the movie woudl be lost - but I’d say it’s probably preferable that you would have seen it first. If you did, and you don’t lihe the first one I don’t feel this is going to do much better for you but there’s a chance it will. With less of his “morally questionable” cop buddies in the movie, this one somehow ends up having an array of characters available that makes it seem more enjoyable and perhaps less gritty then the first one, and some may appreciate it more for that. Either way I had a good time with it’s spiny little road to diamond heisting,