Den of Thieves
Director: Christian Gudegast
Writer: Christian Gudegast, Paul Scheuring
Cast: Gerard Butler, Pablo Schreiber, O’Shea Jackson Jr., 50 Cent, Meadow Williams, Maurice Compte, Brian Van Holt, Evan Jones, Mo McRae, Kaiwi Lyman, Dawn Olivieri, Eric Braeden
Seen on: 7.2.2018
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Plot:
Nick (Gerard Butler) has been after Merrimen (Pablo Schreiber) and his crew of bank robbers for a while. After they hit yet another bank, Nick manages to corner Donnie (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) who runs with Merrimen and learns that they plan to rob the Federal Reserve. But as Nick’s personal life spirals ever more out of control, it remains questionable whether he can gain the upper hand on Merrimen and his boys.

I hoped that Den of Thieves would fall into the category of f”ilms so bad that they’re good”. Unfortunately that hope didn’t come true at all. It was so serious and so boring, it practically sucked my higher brain functions straight out of my head.

Den of Thieves gives us one asshole after the other, all doused in a healthy (or rather unhealthy) dose of toxic masculinity – and it doesn’t even realize it. It confuses grit with complexity and violence with something to say. And for some reason, it still believes that the audience will care one iota about any of those fuckers.

It took about 30 minutes of this onslaught of the worst kind of masculinity with more than its fair share of sexism, coupled with a very serious tone that doesn’t allow for even the slightest levity of sense of humor as it would destroy The Grit(tm), to completely wear me down. I seriously felt almost physically beaten by this film, forced into a strange kind of submission that I can only explain as playing dead in the face of danger. The danger in this case being me actually dying from having to sit through the film.

I played dead so well that I didn’t even see the final plot twist coming – and honestly, it’s not a good twist. In another film that would have kept me engaged even slightly more, I would have seen it coming from kilometers away. But this film just ruined me, and not in the good way.

There were two things I didn’t entirely hate about the film: one, the only character who manages to score at least a few sympathy points actually wins in the end and two, it shows just how hot Pablo Schreiber is, even despite the crappy role. But other than that, I might prefer to punch myself in the face over watching this film again.

Summarizing: Stay the fuck away.