Den of Thieves: “Gerard Butler doesn’t even shout, I promise.”

Den of Thieves is a gritty crime thriller written and directed by Christian Gudegast, screenwriter of such recent classics as London has Fallen. The film is the directorial debut for Gudegast and has been in development hell for nearly fourteen years, moving between different distributors before landing a secure deal with STX Entertainment.

Set in present day Los Angeles, the film opens with the shocking statistic that Los Angeles is the bank robbing capital of the world with a robbery occurring every forty-five minutes. In order to apprehend the most successful bank robbery crew, an elite Major Crimes unit lead by ‘Big Nick’ O’Brien (Gerard Butler) are brought in to stop the crew before they commit an impossible heist on the Federal Reserve Bank.

The plot hopes to mimic the framework of Michael Mann’s Heat (1995) by following two protagonists, one side from the criminals and the other on the police force. With one side of the coin being Gerard Butler, the other side is Donnie Wilson, the getaway driver for the bank robbery crew, played by O’Shea Jackson Jr, Ice Cube’s son.

This is where the plot somewhat falls down, as this attempt to balance a dual protagonist fails because the plot begins to heavily focus on Gerard Butler and his back story, which is very well done I must say. But Donnie Wilson is given very little room to thrive and uncover his motivations.  

Even with this lob sidedness, Butler delivers a sombre complexity that is entirely reminiscent of Al Pacino’s character in Heat. While maintaining the gruff, reckless, stocky presence on screen – the film takes moments to simply show him breaking down in tears in his car after his family life begins to fall apart.

Unfortunately, the run time is a problem. Standing at 140 minutes, with the one exception of Mann’s ‘Heat’, there is just too much fat for a genre conventionally operating within a 90 - 120-minute time scale. By elongating the run time, the film loses that crucial punch-like feel typically associated with crime thrillers for instance being: The Driver, Inside Man or Sicario.

By far the greatest aspect in the entirety of Thieves, is the film’s score. The composer Cliff Martinez has previously worked on Nicolas Winding Refn projects, the main one being Drive. Similar to Drive, the score generates this brooding atmosphere and intensity which is a symptom of many landmark crime thriller of recent years. It slowly rumbles below the surface and provides the elusive back drop to many of the best sequences throughout the film.

While possessing a generic plot and showcasing moments we have seen before; Den of Thieves is an entertaining watch nevertheless. Bottling up a concoction of elements from previous crime thrillers, Den of Thieves achieves a feat that recent world-beaters such as Geostorm, London has Fallen and Gods of Egypt could not comprehend, Gerard Butler acting. He doesn’t even shout – I promise.