The franchise is back after a laborious seven years that included COVID and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but filmmaker Christian Gudegast believes a third installment will come much sooner.

I wasn’t actively writing about movies when Den of Thieves came out in 2018, so it was one I opted to skip at the time. However, I became aware that a bit of a cult following started to grow around the Gerard Butler heist movie,

Gerard Butler didn't have the best time filming Den of Thieves 2: Pantera as he shot the movie "with a freshly torn ACL."

The dogged cop and wily thief butt heads again in Christian Gudegast's follow-up to his 2018 heist thriller. Imagine the iconic diner sit-down scene between Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in Michael Mann’s Heat stretched out to feature length and you’ll get some idea of Den of Thieves 2: Pantera.

Pantera, starring Gerard Butler and O'Shea Jackson Jr., occasionally works, but gets too caught up in cliche criminal caper tropes.

Now, Butler and Jackson are back in “ Den of Thieves 2: Pantera ,” and Petzold and other fans of the original will be happy to hear that the sequel is even better than the original: faster, funnier, and jammed with spectacular action set pieces that Gudegast shot on a swift schedule.

Christian Gudegast's sequel ups the stupidity of the cat-and-mouse thriller that preceded it en route to becoming far more entertaining than it had any right to be.