A group of bank thieves has come onto the radar of the LA Sheriff’s special unit. As they plan an audacious heist, the Sheriff and his men are doing all they can to stop them.
Written and directed by Christian Gudegast from a story by Gudegast and Paul Scheuring, Den of Thieves is a heist film that takes its time, its sweet, long time. The story has some great elements such as the bank at the center of the main heist being the Federal Reserve and the thieves all being ex-military, sports guys, or both. The film uses these ideas very well, but it takes the longest possible road between each action sequences, creating a film that is over 2 hours long that should be barely 90 minutes. The characters are well developed and each get plenty screen time, something the overly long run time gives the film the possibility to do. Unfortunately, this leads to the film feeling like it meanders aimlessly and pointlessly forever. The story has a bunch of good sequences but the filler, which does feel like filler most of the time, is mostly useless and overly long. The Sheriff is not a 100% good guy, this is established more than once, and when it comes to the point where the viewer gets to see (spoiler alert) his wife leave him, it’s just not something they care about anymore.
The cast here is led by Gerard Butler and Pablo Schreiber who both give good performances. Not award winning performances but better than most heist films to come out in the last few years. Here Butler plays the Sheriff who has issues, runs his department in a cavalier way, and gets shit done. His character gets a lot of screen time and Butler’s producer credit may explain that. That being said, he does give a good performance and is not annoying to watch here. Schreiber gives a less emotional but still good performance as the lead thief. The surprising performance comes from Curtis ’50 Cent’ Jackson who also gets a few non-necessary scenes where we get to see him act, showing he can definitely stand with the rest of the actors here. The rest of the cast also does well, some better than others, with a few performances falling a bit more flat, but that is bound to happen in a film with this many characters and side storylines.
The cinematography by Terry Stacey gives the film a look that is basically what one expects from a heist film with a touch more. Something in the images says that attention was paid to how this film was shot. The editing by Joel Cox with David Cox and Nathan Godley is also well done, but could have used trimming in a major way. The film clocks in at 2 hours and 20 minutes or so and could easily have told the same story in 90 minutes while still having the emotional moments, the character set up, and a few extra bits here and there. The editing indulges the story and gives many scenes much too long to develop when a tighter editing might have made them more exciting, more interesting and given the film a better rhythm in the long run.
Den of Thieves is a heist film with a ton of possibility that just goes for the character study where it doesn’t need to, that adds scenes here, there, just about everywhere to give the audience a better feel for each character. This in and of itself would not be a problem if these scenes actually brought something to the table and were not so long. Most of those scenes feel like they could be cut out and the film would not suffer, but gain instead. The most frustrating thing is that there is a good to great heist movie in there; it just needs to be edited out of the fluff and character explorations that seemingly last forever. The over-indulgent run time causes viewers to check-out before the film is over and by the time the film gets to its final battle, no one cares anymore. The acting is good to strong and the heist parts are fun to watch with some truly tense moments, but they are too few and far in-between to make this an exciting or fun to watch film.