Den of Thieves (2018)

Elevator Pitch: A gang of former marines with massive firepower available have a plan to rob the Federal Reserve Bank, an apparently impossible heist. But as well as having this difficult objective they are being tracked by an equally heavily armed group of LA sherriffs. When the gang steal an empty armoured cash delivery truck the sherriffs, led by Nick O’Brien, are called in. One of the gang has been killed in the firefight and gradually Nick and his guys put the plot together.

Content: There is no sex and just  glimpse of female nudity. The sherriffs lounge about in their vests and muscles, and so do the gang, with occassional increased violence as people are interrogated. Nick’s wife leaves him taking their daughters with her. There are firefights with automatic weapons as the armoured van is stolen, a bank robbery takes place and the criminal gang is chased across the landscape.

A View: To start with I could not tell the difference between the police and the gang, and Nick O’Brien says at one point “You think the gang are the bad guys, they aren’t, we are”. This film is just a bunch of clichés stuck together, including (sigh) the detective’s wife leaving him. At least I could see why she did, which is more than I could tell about the rest of the plot, since most of the action seemed to be pointless. This includes the heist itself, although it would be a spoiler to say why. So, in my view, not really worth your time, even if you are a Gerard Butler fan.

Additional Info: Possibly due to its quite moderate estimated budget it made some money and a sequel is in the pipeline.