Den of Thieves is a crime film that follows the connected personal lives of an elite unit of the LA County’s Sheriff’s Dept. The Sheriff’s Dept is chasing a successful bank robbery crew, who plan to execute a heist at the Federal Reserve Bank in downtown Los Angeles.
Every day, $120 million in cash is taken out of circulation and destroyed by the Los Angeles Branch of the Federal Reserve. This money is usually not tracked or marked in a database. And this is the money that the crew of bank robbers are after. Was the crew successful in executing the heist? Were they apprehended? This is what forms the rest of the story.
The film has been co-written, directed and produced by Christian Gudegast. The film stars Gerard Butler, 50 Cent, Pablo Schreiber, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Evan Jones, Dawn Olivieri, Mo McRae, and Max Holloway. Den of Thieves is a movie that borrows lots of ideas from other heist films such as Inside Man, Heat, Usual Suspects, and many more.
It’s almost like a homage to all the greatest heist flicks, yet it almost falls flat on the face when it comes to the execution and plot. Everything seems loosely knit, and put together in haste. At times, the plot seems unconvincing in places, especially the way the heist was executed. Before the movie ended I could actually put the pieces together to figure out the twist in the whole story that was to come towards the fag end.
Having said all of that, Den of Thieves isn’t a boring movie. It is a very engaging movie and does not include parts that might bore you. If you are an action fan, there’s plenty of ear-shattering shootouts and bone-breaking fight scenes to give you an adrenaline rush.
Den of Thieves, however, is a 90 minute movie that has been stretched out to last a good 2 hours and 20 minutes. It would have been better if the movie makers just focused on one aspect – either the group of cops or the Merrimen, as the bank thieves called themselves. If they had, Den of Thieves would have turned out be quite brilliant. But, as the movie is now, it’s probably watchable just once.
