1.5 stars. Rated R, for violence, relentless profanity, sexuality and nudity
By Derrick Bang
This is a vile, vulgar and
violent slice of exploitative trash.
Which is a shame, because there’s
a rather clever heist thriller — with an audacious final twist — buried beneath
writer/director Christian Gudegast’s boatload of moral squalor.
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| "Big Nick" O'Brien (Gerard Butler, right) can't figure out what a crew of professional bank robbers might be up to ... which is no surprise, since O'Brien appears to have the intelligence of a cranberry. |
Gudegast will be recalled as the
scribe behind 2016’s atrociously mean-spirited and deplorably xenophobic London Has Fallen, and his sensibilities
haven’t changed. Once upon a time, action heroes took pains to avoid needless
collateral civilian fatalities, but no more; these days, blasting unlucky
bystanders is merely part of the business-as-usual body count.
Really, there’s little difference
between the good guys and bad guys. Which appears to be how Gudegast sees the
world.
He’s also unpardonably sexist:
Almost all the women in this testosterone-fueled swill are whores, or
strippers, or both. The one exception is our (supposedly) good guy’s
long-suffering wife, who pops up just long enough to announce that she’s
leaving him, and taking their two young daughters, for their own protection.
It shows good taste on the part
of actress Dawn Olivieri, who apparently bolted from the set as quickly as
possible.
This crime saga is set in Los
Angeles, which an introductory text crawl boldly proclaims is the “bank robbery
capital of the world” — which hasn’t been true for at least 20 years — and then
offers, as “supporting facts,” some overblown statistics that, aside from being
ludicrously inaccurate, also suffer from bad math. (What, did nobody notice?)
Getting this information dump in
the first few minutes, against the throbbing pulse of Cliff Martinez’s
painfully loud synth score, does not bode well for what follows.
That sinking feeling proved more prophetic,
as Gudegast’s story wore on.
Den of Thieves is an insufferably macho battle
of wits and tough-talking swagger between L.A. Sheriff’s Department icon “Big Nick” O’Brien (Gerard Butler) and special forces veteran-turned-bank robber Ray
Merriman (Pablo Schreiber). O’Brien heads the Regulators, an elite major crimes
squad — apparently answerable to nobody — while Merriman runs the Outlaws, a
gang of ex-military men with exceptional expertise and tactical skills.
Caught in the middle: Donnie
Wilson (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), an ex-con bartender with a facility for fast cars,
who’s forced by O’Brien to spy on the Outlaws when Merriman hires him as a
getaway driver.
