'Den Of Thieves' is a den of dreariness (Review)

Film: "Den Of Thieves"; Director: Christian Gudegast; Cast: Gerard Butler, Pablo Schreiber, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Brian Van Holt, Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson III, Evan Jones, Kaiwi Lyman-Mersereau, Moe McRae, Maurice Compte; Rating: *1/2

If you love "Oceans 11", then try drowning in the din and slush of "Den Of Thieves". It's a film so impressed by its own awe of the heist genre, it keels back in admiration to look at the genre with a mix of awe and orgasmic joy. If only we could feel the director's throbbing excitement. All we feel is a dreary disconnect.

The film is well-edited, though. The scenes move in a fastidious montage conceived and executed with superfluous dexterity, designed to suck us into the morass morality of bada** policemen and robbers, so morally interchangeable the 'good' and the 'bad' sides are mirror-images.

Equally ugly.

It's sad to see Gerard Butler, once a formidable name to reckon with, here reduced to a shadow of his earlier charismatic self... An over-sized commodious unwieldy shadow. He plays a burnt-out disagreeable policeman who swigs alcohol and antacid and laughs at colleagues who are bathed and groomed. Much like the "Oceans 11" bunch that must be laughing all the way to the bank before robbing it.

Butler, with his boorish bravado, really belongs to a Ram Gopal Varma film. To subject him and us to this tortuous heist-farce is not only unjust, but downright cruel.

A lot of footage goes into the characters convincing us they are worse scumbags than they seem to be. The performances range from aggressive play-acting to submersive cool-acting. Butler falls in neither category. He is situated in a sorry sordid state of self-annihilation as his character is kicked and beaten by his wife in the midst of trying to stop a high-profile bank robbery in downtown Los Angeles.

Have we seen a more exciting car-chase sequences in a heist-robbery film than this? Oh yes, most probably. Have we seen a more unoriginal heist film? Gawd, no! "Den Of Thieves" is a mayhem-motivated mess best left to the misogynists who enjoy watching overgrown boys playing policemen and robbers.

That skidding sound you hear is not just the wheels. It's also a plot horribly off-track.

--IANS

skj/rb

Copyright  IANS

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