Den of Thieves 2: Pantera (2025) Review

An Entertaining January Potboiler
3

Summary

Den of Thieves 2: Pantera isn’t as action-packed as I would have liked with some serious pacing issues, but it’s still fun to see Gerard Butler as “Big Nick” having banter with O’Shea Jackson Jr.’s Donnie Wilson. If you loved the first movie then you’ll still enjoy this, but it’s understandable why it’s been dumped in the early January slot at theatres.

Plot: Big Nick is back on the hunt in Europe and closing in on Donnie, who is embroiled in the treacherous world of diamond thieves and the infamous Panther mafia, as they plot a massive heist of the world’s largest diamond exchange.

Review: As we discussed in our Livestream last week, I didn’t love the first Den of Thieves; I thought it was an entertaining enough Heat wannabe with Gerard Butler chewing the scenery as “Big Nick” O’Brien. I found it too long and it dragged at times with little in the way of action after the cracking opening scene.

Butler is back as Nick in this sequel, Pantera which hits theatres this week; I was hoping this was going to have tighter pacing with more action but it’s actually the opposite. There is about 10-15 minutes of action in the entire runtime of this movie which is 2 hours and 35 minutes long. I asked on the stream last week what was the difference between a crime thriller and an action movie and someone said a crime thriller has more drama and less action which is exactly the case with these movies.

The first movie at least had the addition of Pablo Schreiber to the cast who is one of my favourite actors and the criminals were more interesting characters than the cops. In this sequel I missed Schreiber’s presence and the new cast members didn’t really grab me at all. This is Gerard Butler and O’Shea Jackson Jr.’s movie with “Big Nick” seemingly switching sides to help Donnie Wilson pull off a daring heist.

Most of the movie involves preparing for the job and despite not being packed with action I still enjoyed it as Nick and Donnie have some witty banter at times and I kind of wish the movie was just them in a buddy flick. In this first movie I found Nick to not be especially sympathetic and yet his bad behaviour made the character compelling. In this sequel he’s less interesting and more subdued now that his marriage is over, and he’s lost his way. Admittedly, it makes his arc more believable as this is really more of a redemption tale for him after years of womanizing and playing by his own rules.

What action we get includes a fight at a club, an opening heist and then a car chase/shoot-out for the finale. It is at times rather tense but like the first movie could have had a few minutes trimmed for pacing reasons.

This wraps up the story nicely but also leaves it open for a potential third entry and despite this movie’s flaws I’d still watch a third one as I enjoy Jackson and Butler on screen together.

I always say this, but my favourite aspect of the entire film was the international locations which give the film a grander scale and a sense of epicness.

Overall, Den of Thieves 2: Pantera is overlong like the first movie, but I also found the new characters less interesting and it was lacking in the action department. What we get is well executed and it’s still nice to see an R-rated action movie on the big screen, so there are worse ways to spend an evening.