Den Of Thieves ****

A modern day heist movie thriller that sees a gang of ex soldiers turned bank robbers hunted by renegade corrupt cops whilst they attempt the ultimate heist of robbing the Federal Reserve. 

A two hours four minute run time does ask the question of how that time is going to be filled in a genre that has been done time and time again.

Den Of Thieves plays well into the format and offers many twists and thrills in a film that Is trying desperately hit above it’s weight. 

The film which is going to be compared on some level to great Heist genre films like Heat does attempt to stray into it’s own unique territory. 

The first element that provides uniqueness in this story is it’s totally unknown who we really are rooting for if anyone. We have the cop killing bank robbers on one side and corrupt torturing cops on the other. 

In fact as the film reaches its climatic shoot out it’s debatable who you want to win? By definition alone it has to go to the police surely but frankly with characters this faulted it’s hard to know. 

Talking of which it’s a pleasure to see Gerard Butler after years of hollow pay check roles in Geo Storm or London Has Fallen, and let’s not forget (No matter how much the therapy cost) Gods Of Egypt that here he actually hands a great performance of a haggard, drink abusing, suspect abusing, wife abusing, hard as nails corrupt sheriff.

He plays it well and unlike other 90% of characters we explore his personal life of which is a complete disaster. In fact it makes it obvious his only ambition to succeed to derived from the fact his no good at doing anything else nor has anything else to do. 

The bank robbers on the other hand it’s hard to really sympathize with any after the opening sequence sees them kill half a dozen cops and security men just doing their jobs. 

This however is the uniqueness of it all the real life aspect of trying to separate good from bad or bad and worse well you get the idea. 

The film offers twists in the tale that one point play out the genre beat by beat then start providing alternate beats to misdirect then back on the main plot. 

Being a LA Heist Movie and being in the same genre as Heat which was which contained a epic climatic shoot out you know Den Of Thieves is going to try and give it a run for it money and surely its does.

The build up to the shoot out is thrilling and with characters as flawed as these you have no idea who’s for the fatal bullet. 

A final Ocean’s 11 sequence near the end breaks the tone of the overall film but still its faults, mini plot holes etc are forgiven with a ambitious thriller that tries harder than most.