DEN OF THIEVES: GOOD BUT DOESN’T BRING ON THE HEAT

I love a good heist movie. There’ve been some classics in the genre. THE ITALIAN JOB and OCEAN’S ELEVEN stand out in my memory. So when I heard a new heist film was out called DEN OF THIEVES starring Gerard Butler I was in. Sad to say it didn’t live up to my expectations though.

The movie opens with an armored car robbery that goes awry. A guard is shot and killed, not something Ray Merrimen (Pablo Schreiber) the master planner had in mind. A shootout follows but the team escapes and he later reprimands the weak member of his team for not following orders.

The next day Det. Nick O'Brien (Butler) arrives to investigate the case. He and his team of elite no-nonsense officers have been tracking Merrimen for a while now. Through various leads and questionable methods of interrogation they begin to think they may have an idea of what the big heist is going to be. They just need to fill in the details.

As all of this is going along we also get a glimpse of O’Brien’s home life. Like most police in movies like this his marriage is a shambles. He’s also finding it difficult to spend quality time with his child. The end result is his wife leaving and moving in with her sister while filing for divorce.

The day of the heist arrives and O’Brien and his team have staked out the bank they know Merrimen is going to hit. Hit it he does taking those inside the bank hostage and threatening to kill them if he doesn’t get money and a helicopter out of the bank. Stalling for time O’Brien and his team placate Merrimen. Until they realize something just isn’t right.

SPOILER ALERT: This is when the movie gets good. We discover that the bank job was cover for a much larger plan, stealing used bills intended for destruction at the nearby Federal Reserve. As the job is going down O’Brien and his team realize what’s happening and race to the scene to take down Merrimen and his team.

The film ends with a major chase and shootout taking up most of the last hour of the film. It’s a tense struggle and not everyone will come out alive. But the movie doesn’t end there. And that is the best part about the movie, the end. So if you decide to watch it keep in mind it’s not over until the credits roll.

So what’s good about the movie? It has an involved plot that needs paid attention to to be followed. The story here of the elite commando type team of criminals facing off against the best of the best of the police works well. And to make things a bit different the criminals are more inclined appear the more elite team than the police. The police are the gruff looking tough talking types some movies have gone towards.

This takes us to the bad. The language used by Butler here actually becomes distracting after a while rather than help form his character. He’s not a character we care much about. There isn’t a sympathetic character to associate yourself with. The criminals are willing to kill anyone who gets in their way. The police squad comes off as unruly, undisciplined in certain circumstances and just plain mean. Who do you root for?

Then there’s the length of the film. There’s no reason for this film to last nearly two and a half hours. It’s not that epic of a story. Plenty of scenes could have been trimmed to bring the movie down to even two hours. If film directors in the 30s and 40s could make a decent film and tell an entire story in under 80 minutes why do today’s directors feel the need to expand the length of a film for no reason?

While watching this film I kept thinking back to the movie HEAT from 1995 starring Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino. That movie lasted nearly three hours and didn’t feel near as long as this one did. I was thinking that the director here felt he was making a monumental epic in the tradition of that film. If that was the case he failed miserably. The movie is entertaining enough for a single viewing but nothing that I would make myself sit through again or add to my collection. It’s simply there.

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