Gerard Butler (GREENLAND) is probably never going to win an Oscar for his acting and I suspect he knows that and doesn’t really care. The man has carved out a very lucrative career for himself producing mid-budget action films starring himself. The company, G-Base, which Butler owns along with his agent, Alan Siegel, has made 12 films so far and the films have brought in over US$400 million at the global box office. While very few of these films were critically well received, they have, for the most part, either covered their production costs or done significantly better than that. Their 2019 film, ANGEL HAS FALLEN, did exceptionally well, taking in over US$133 million off a production budget of just US$40 million. Butler is back with a sequel to his 2018 film, DEN OF THIEVES. While DEN OF THIEVES 2: PANTERA hasn’t been the box office success that its predecessor was, it has at least covered its production costs, though not its marketing costs.

It’s been a few years since the events of DEN OF THIEVES and some things have changed in Nick O’Brien’s (Butler) life. He’s newly divorced from his wife and seemingly put on leave by the Los Angeles Sherriff’s Department. When an audacious diamond heist on the tarmac of the airport in Antwerp, Belgium takes place, resulting in the theft of a precious red diamond belonging to a Mafia kingpin, Big Nick starts to look into the case and learns that his old nemesis, Donnie Wilson (O’Shea Jackson Jr., COCAINE BEAR), is involved. Nick tracks Donnie down to Nice, France, where Donnie is part of a crew, known as the Panthers, that is planning to rob the World Diamond Center located in that city. Big Nick, who is down on his luck, convinces Donnie to bring him in on the heist.

Let’s suspend our collective belief for a moment that Donnie would be dumb enough to believe that Big Nick is an honest player. But, as Donnie says, he likes the challenge of slipping in and out of situations without being noticed and maybe this is an acceptable risk he’s prepared to take. The story is very loosely based on a real event — the 2003 Antwerp Diamond Heist which, guess what, took place in the city where the real World Diamond Centre is located. Sunny Nice, though, is far more glamorous than grey Antwerp, and the winding cliffside roads make for stunning cinematography. Realists like me will be rolling their eyes at some of the other leaps of faith writer-director Christian Gudegast (DEN OF THIEVES and son of longtime TV soap opera star Eric Braeden) puts the audience through. I especially loved the bespoke floor plan software that the team whips up within hours. It takes me longer to do a half-decent spreadsheet with macros.

But DEN OF THIEVES 2: PANTERA isn’t about realism. It’s about action and there’s plenty of that as Butler does his best imitation of Russell Crowe being a deadbeat dad. Which reminds me, Butler needs to make a movie with Crowe. Like many of Butler’s other films, this one also features a slew of European actors who are unknown to most people outside of the continent. For some reason, Dutch Muslim actress Nazmiye Oral was cast as a Jewish diamond dealer named Chava. Though most audiences wouldn’t know the difference, her Hebrew pronunciation was laughable. In any case, the real Jewish diamond dealers of Antwerp speak Yiddish to each other, not Hebrew, something Gudegast would have known had he watched the 2023 Netflix series ROUGH DIAMONDS.

Even with all its faults though, DEN OF THIEVES 2: PANTERA is sufficiently entertaining with reasonable performances from both Butler and Jackson. Not surprisingly, a third DEN OF THIEVES film is already in the works and is expected out next year.

DEN OF THIEVES 2: PANTERA is currently available to buy or rent on Amazon Prime and Apple TV. It hasn’t come to the streaming services yet but that should happen in the coming weeks.

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