Den of Thieves merely remake of Heat as B-movie

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This article was published 16/01/2018 (2291 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Aerial shots of Los Angeles by night… an armoured-car heist that turns deadly… a crew of heavy-hitting thieves inexorably matched up against a squad of elite cops in the major crimes unit.

The movie is Den of Thieves, but the description could just as easily apply to Michael Mann’s elegant 1995 cop procedural Heat, wherein Robert De Niro’s psychopathic crook and Al Pacino’s alpha cop mixed it up in a sustained battle of wits that culminated in a jaw-dropping gun battle in the city’s sun-cooked concrete canyons.

With Den of Thieves, writer-director Christian Gudegast transposes Heat into a key of B… as in B-movie. The most significant alteration is in its hero. Instead of Pacino’s driven, canny detective, we get Gerard Butler as Nick Flanagan, a foul-mouthed, tattooed, frequently drunk flatfoot in the L.A. Sheriff’s Department. He is tasked with investigating that aforementioned armoured-car heist, extra mysterious because the only thing that was stolen was the vehicle itself.

Flanagan manages to determine a likely suspect, ex-con/ex-soldier Merrimen (Pablo Schreiber), who is indeed circling one of those ultra-lucrative one-last-job heists involving one of the most secure locations on the planet, the Federal Reserve. Flanagan drafts as his own inside man a low-level getaway driver named Donnie (O’Shea Jackson).

Actually, “draft” is too nice a word. Flanagan and his fellow cops basically resort to kidnapping and torture. A scene in which Flanagan puts captive Donnie in a chokehold is sufficiently inflammatory — it’s anyone’s guess as to whether Gudegast understands this — as to render ambiguous the question: just who are the good guys and who are the bad guys here?

One thing is certain: Butler uses the role to chew up scenery with the gusto of a thespian Tasmanian devil.

However much you may be inclined to like Butler as an actor, one may frequently end up hating his actual work. That’s certainly the case here. His character is a womanizing brute who only feels wounds when his wife walks out with his two daughters. One could charitably assume he is again essaying the toxic masculinity explored in previous films such as Law Abiding Citizen, The Ugly Truth, 300 and, come to think of it, The Phantom of the Opera. But if it’s an exploration, it doesn’t have a destination.

All things considered, one must conclude Gutegast’s intention was just to create a down-and-dirty variant of Heat exchanging Mann’s nuance and artful compositions for big, bloody gun battles. It feels particularly egregious when it comes to interesting female characters (remember Heat’s Diane Venora, Amy Brenneman, Ashley Judd and Natalie Portman), Gutegast effectively hangs a No Girls Allowed sign on the proceedings, with female characters who are either angry wives or sexually obliging strippers.

It’s all pretty grim, with some comic relief coming from 50 Cent in the role of Merriman’s trusted lieutenant. (The guy has been acting for 13 years now and he still looks as uncomfortable in front of a camera as he ever has.)

Gutegast demonstrates some skill in staging action. In a less aspirational movie, that might count for something, but it’s all for naught in a movie where it’s impossible to feel invested in any of its characters.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing