Den of Thieves (2018)

(Netflix Streaming, December 2019) As someone who has spent the last few weeks playing through (and really enjoying) Grand Theft Auto V, I was perhaps better predisposed than most to enjoy this somewhat generic take on heist movies. Set in Los Angeles and featuring a crew of ex-military personnel planning very sophisticated robberies (sometime under cover of hostage taking), Den of Thieves inevitably brings back to mind such classics as Heat and Dog Day Afternoon, only to feel far more generic. It doesn’t help its case by making the law-and-order side of the characters feel as repellent as the criminals—Gerald Butler stars as a cowboy cop who open boasts that his gang wear badges, and isn’t above intimidating his soon-to-be ex-wife’s friends with a gratuitous psycho-cop routine. Whom to root for in this movie isn’t obvious, until the last few minutes make it clear that the film has a twist ending in mind. (Well, roughly the same twist ending than most heist movies have with a dash of a hidden mastermind thrown in.)  While slickly made with the latest in digital drone technology allowing for some impressive shots, Den of Thieves feels both too long and too short: Writer-director Christian Gudegast wastes time on things that won’t be really important (such as the protagonist’s rotten personal life), and yet feels too short by not developing what could be used to make stronger characters. The protagonist’s divorce arc takes all of three or four scenes and ends at the psycho-cop routine sometime in the second act. Why bother? If you settle on the film being too long, then it could have been recut to focus on the decent action sequences. For action junkies and GTAV enthusiasts, there’s always a thrill in seeing good live-action set-pieces, and if Den of Thieves doesn’t always know when to stop and condense, there is at least one sequence (the traffic-jam shootout) that I fully expect to be reused in the next Grand Theft Auto. Not every movie has to be a classic—some can simply go through the motions and still be satisfying if that’s the kind of thing you’re looking for, and that’s how I choose to assess Den of Thieves—Methadone to Heat’s pure heroin, but still good for most heist movie cravings.