‘Den of Thieves 2’ review: Heads to France and loses danger

Director Christian Gudegast’s juiced-up 2018 “Heat” homage “Den of Thieves” has become a bit of a cult hit in the years since it was released, due in large part to co-star Gerard Butler’s boisterously haggard performance as “Big Nick” O’Brien, a dirty Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department detective (and gang member) on the tail of a well-connected master thief, Merrimen (Pablo Schreiber).

If “Den of Thieves,” was a kind of “Dumb Heat,” then the sequel, “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera,” pays tribute to another Robert De Niro thriller, “Ronin,” with car chases set on the hairpin turns in the hills of Nice, France, and a new crew of skilled thieves led by a charismatic woman, Jovanna (Evin Ahmad). Meanwhile, Donnie Wilson (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), the promising young driver from the first film who pulled one over on both Big Nick and Merrimen, has now joined the Serbian Mafia (a.k.a. Pantera) on some high-ticket diamond heists. Cat burglars on the French Riviera? Sounds like “To Catch a Den of Thieves,” non?

In his loose remakes of the De Niro filmography, Gudegast by now knows the appeal is Big Nick, so he’s got to get our man — the ink still wet on his divorce papers — to France, hot on the heels of young Donnie. And so “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera” becomes a travelogue for our antihero, an “A Propos de Nick,” if you will. While he munched and guzzled on donuts, fried chicken and glasses of wine through the first film, now he’s drinking espresso and enjoying “croy-sants” and gelato in Europe.

Nick shows up in France under the guise of identifying his suspect, having tracked Donnie’s bank account, but he all too easily falls in with Donnie and the Pantera crew, linking up with them to rob the vault of the World Diamond Center, where a large pink diamond they stole from a plane in Antwerp, Belgium, is in residence.

Nick is bedeviled by his thieving foes, fascinated by them, and now has nothing to lose. He’s tired of hunting, he claims. So rather than going toe-to-toe in a Torrance Benihana with the snarling ex-con/ex-Long Beach high school football star Merrimen, he’s getting wasted in a French club with the affable Donnie (posing as Jean-Jacques, a wealthy diamond dealer), and drunkenly scootering to get shawarma. It’s amusing, but it’s not exactly the same kind of electrifying tension that animated the first film.

“Pantera” is a bit too goofy, leaning on the silly side of Nick’s persona. The first film was played straight, which is why it worked so well, and no one in “Pantera” matches Schreiber’s nostril-flaring intensity and simmering rage, so it’s more of a buddy comedy between Donnie and Nick. The Serbian gang members aren’t well established, and the Sicilian Mafiosos, who also enter the ring, aren’t fleshed out as proper antagonists either. In fact, they all start to blend into a mass of indistinguishable Euro-mobsters, and there’s no real sense of danger.

Gudegast tackled the script on his own (he co-wrote the first film with “Prison Break” showrunner Paul T. Scheuring), and although he has a knack for inventive heists, the sequel does not boast the lore of its predecessor, and relies heavily on coincidence and deus ex machina to move things along. At a hefty 2 hours and 24 minutes, the film is flabby, not jacked, and lacking in an unpredictable live-wire element.

While it is fun to reconnect with Big Nick and watch him try new foods, there’s just something missing in this rote “Ronin” ripoff — a danger. It seems Gudegast and his cast of characters alighted for Europe with only a few ideas in place, and the tapestry of this world is not woven as tightly as the original. Ah well, we’ll always have Torrance.