the story isn't as clever as it would like to be, and would have been stronger if it spent more time on heist mechanics and less on escalating tension between the good bad guys and the bad good guys, but Gudegast's direction is mostly clean and clear
the movie is clever enough, until it cheats. It tries to fill in its characters, until reducing them to plot devices...why there are so many Michael Mann imitators but so few who are able to burn his influence into something memorable
a Los Angeles heist thriller that will remind you of better movies, this is poor-man's action cinema with zero characterization... Den of Thieves spends its overly long runtime juggling action tropes but fails to establish a tone of its own