Film Review: Den of Thieves

"Keep Your Eyes Open. Every Cop In The Country Is Going To Be Looking For Us..."

Being an avid hater of most things which bear the name Gerard Butler in the closing credits, the release of Den of Thieves unsurprisingly accompanied a heavy sense of sadness at potentially spending yet another two hours sat in a screening which results in time ultimately being well and truly wasted, and with London Has Fallen screenwriter, Christian Gudegast, on directorial duties for the very first time in his career, it's not exactly hard to imagine why on entering the auditorium in preparation for Gudegast's movie, my heart became just a tiny bit heavier. Whilst I'm more than adjusted through years of movie-going experiences to sometimes accepting and devouring a slice of humble pie, Den of Thieves is unebelieavably the sort of movie which raises above the sordid expectations set upon it in a somewhat miraculous fashion and leaves you shamelessly declaring out loud how wrong you were in the first place, a movie which presents itself as a slick, if sometimes silly and overly cliched, action romp which although is nothing entirely original or groundbreaking, still manages to be a worthwhile trip of high octane guilty pleasure. Praise the lord, we have a miracle. 

Focusing on two teams either side of the law, each with their own questionable moral compasses and a penchant for steroid infused workouts, Den of Thieves undeniably pays a significant homage to Michael Mann's 1995 crime masterpiece, Heat, in more ways than none, with the narrative essentially switching Al Pacino for Gerard Butler (300) and Robert De Niro for Pablo Schreiber (Orange Is The New Black), and whilst on paper such a switch seems similar to swapping Ferrari for Nissan, Gudegast's penchant for style and solid eye for action set pieces and well orchestrated heist scenes means that within a overly similar tale of cops and robbers, the debutante's movie packs a significantly entertaining punch and manages to hold your attention throughout its' bulky two and a half hour runtime. With Butler actually managing to not be entirely god awful, with even the staggeringly underplayed bad boy lifestyle in which his character partakes failing to undermine his performance, and the rest of the high profile cast including O'Shea Jackson Jr. (Straight Outta Compton) and Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson (Southpaw) all giving a solid case for their inclusion, Den of Thieves is undoubtedly one of the surprises of the year, and even with a "I gotcha!" style ending which wouldn't have gone amiss in Hustle, Gudegast's movie is actually pretty darn good, and for someone who was sharpening their knife going into it, that's damn fine praise indeed. 

Overall Score: 7/10