Movie · 2025 · Action, Crime, Thriller · 2h 24m · R · English
Curator score: 1.7/10 (120.9K ratings)
The score isn't settled.
Overview
Big Nick is back on the hunt in Europe and closing in on Donnie, who is embroiled in the treacherous and unpredictable world of diamond thieves and the infamous Panther mafia, as they plot a massive heist of the world's largest diamond exchange.
Ratings
Curator score: 1.7/10
IMDb: 6.3/10
Letterboxd: 2.87/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 62%
Metacritic: 60
TMDB: 6.6/10
Director
Christian Gudegast
Production
Diamond Film Productions, G-BASE, Tucker Tooley Entertainment, Lionsgate, Entertainment One Features
Cast
Gerard Butler, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Evin Ahmad, Salvatore Esposito, Meadow Williams, Swen Temmel, Michael Bisping, Orli Shuka, Rico Verhoeven, Jordan Bridges, Dino Kelly, Fortunato Cerlino, Adriano Chiaramida, Pat Skipper, Stéphane Coulon, Cristian Solimeno, Nazmiye Oral, Mark Grosy, Joshua Gabriel Liège, Yasen Atour
Where to watch
Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
Curator Review
Verdict
A scrappy, knowingly macho heist sequel that trades the first film’s Heat-style seriousness for looser, more playful Euro-crime vibes. It’s often incoherent, but the chemistry, swagger, and absurd set pieces give it enough personality to recommend for the right audience.
Best for
Viewers who like grungy heist movies with big personalities
Fans of Gerard Butler’s sweaty, self-serious antihero mode
People who enjoy crime films that lean into banter, hangout energy, and style over logic
Anyone curious about a sequel that intentionally shifts from hard-edged procedural to breezier caper mode
Skip if
You need airtight plotting and clean procedural logic
You dislike macho posturing or crude humor
You want a polished, prestige crime thriller
You were hoping for a darker, more disciplined follow-up to the original
Overview
Den of Thieves 2: Pantera is less interested in precision than in attitude. It takes the franchise away from bruising American cop-and-robber grit and drops it into a sun-baked European caper groove, where the plotting gets messy but the vibe gets looser, stranger, and more entertaining. The result is a sequel that feels more like a swaggering detour than a straight continuation.
Worth noting
Gerard Butler throws himself into the role with full-body commitment, and the movie knows how to build scenes around his bluster, discomfort, and comic physicality. O’Shea Jackson Jr. gives the film a grounded counterweight, and their odd-couple energy helps smooth over the narrative confusion. When the movie is working, it’s because it understands these men as loud, vain, and weirdly charming animals in expensive clothes.
Bottom line
This is not a film for viewers who need every beat to click. It’s for audiences who can enjoy a heist movie as a mood piece: club lights, coastal roads, petty betrayals, and the occasional burst of chaos. If the first film was trying to be a tough-guy classic, this one is content to be a sleazier, more freewheeling cousin.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Matt! (3★) · 915 likes
Sweaty Gerard Butler dancing and yelling “Fuck NATO!” while on ecstasy is such a vibe.
This isn’t really the high point of Scumbag Cinema that the first one was, but it’s still certainly an entry nonetheless. Much more of just a straightforward run-of-the-mill heist movie than it is another rip-off of Heat or The Town, which I guess sort of begs the question, “is it better to be a lesser copy of something great, or something original yet average?” One… more
George Carmi (3.5★) · 908 likes
gerard butler driving the italian coast whilst m83’s outro plays is probably the greatest ending in film history.
Josh Lewis (4★) · 759 likes
In between doing music videos and uncredited writing and rewriting for 90s/00s studio movies, LA native Christian Gudegast spent many years trying to get his B-movie passion project Den of Thieves off the ground where he would be able to remix the extended elaborate procedural heist mechanics of an Ocean’s movie job with the macho, tactical, destruction-heavy cops-and-robbers brotherhood crime dramatics of Heat, and place both inside the dirtier more industrial pockets of LA he grew up around (that you… more In between doing music videos and uncredited writing and rewriting for 90s/00s studio movies, LA native Christian Gudegast spent many years trying to get his B-movie passion project Den of Thieves off the ground where he would be able to remix the extended elaborate procedural heist mechanics of an Ocean’s movie job with the macho, tactical, destruction-heavy cops-and-robbers brotherhood crime dramatics of Heat, and place both inside the dirtier more industrial pockets of LA he grew up around (that you… more
Will Menaker (3.5★) · 627 likes
If the original was Heat for the Monster Energy/Affliction-demographic, the sequel does the same for Le Cercle Rouge. While it lacks certain sleaziness that made the original a classic, the sequel provides enough guys-being-dudes charm between Gerard Butler and O'Shea Jackson to make up for it. Worth the price of admission for the scene where Big Nick rolling face after smoking(?) E at the club yells "Fuck NATO" in a moment of commiseration with a Serbian guy.
BenDavid Grabinski (5★) · 513 likes
I don’t know if there will be a better movie in 2025. More derivative than the original. A miracle. Himbo RONIN. Should’ve been released directly to the Criterion Collection. If you hate this you’re a fake Big Nick fan.
A cool, vehicle-heavy professional-criminal thriller with tense teamwork, shifting loyalties, and a European setting that rewards fans of sleek outlaw logistics.