The first Den of Thieves caught me by surprise. It didn’t do well at the box office but caught traction when it hit Netflix, so much so I had long assumed it was a Netflix original and was thus surprised when this sequel was released to theaters. But apparently it was the original was a flick destined to be forgotten until Netflix breathed new life into it and generated enough interest for a second go around, albeit 7 years later.
The first film was non-stop action and shootouts. This one is more of a thinker. At times, I felt like it tried to be an updated European version of Heat and by the way, it’s time for my yearly rewatch of that fine film.
As you might recall from the first film, LA Sheriff’s Department Detective Nick O’Brien (Gerard Butler) investigated a crew of ex-Marines who robbed the Federal reserve, only to realize at the end that their driver Donnie Wilson (O’Shea Jackson) was the mastermind of it all, and eluded Nick’s capture.
Here, in this sequel, Donnie has fled to Europe and begun working with the Panther mafia to plan an elaborate diamond heist. Nick, fed up with his life (his wife left him, wants alimony, and his police superiors are trashing him over events in the first film) decides to break bad and join Donnie’s crew, whether Donnie wants him or not.
Whereas in the first film, the heisters depended largely on heavy firepower, here the villains use high tech gadgets and tricks. If you’re patient through two-thirds of the movie, the end will wow you with an elaborately pulled off heist followed by the thrills and chills of a high stakes, dangerous get away.
Butler does some serious acting as a frazzled, grizzled old cop who is tired of the grind. O’Shea holds his own as a genius robber who loves the thrill of the game.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. It definitely would get lost as a summer release but is above average for standard January fare.
So much of TV is drek nowadays. There are very few shows that leave me wanting to watch more than one episode, even less that make me want to watch one episode right after another. The ones that make me want to watch it all twice are rare and this is one of them.
For those who don’t remember, Squid Game Season 1 was a surprise hit in the fall of 2021. It had a lot going against it, mainly because it was a South Korean show that Americans would have to watch either with subtitles or with English voices dubbed over. Most English speaking viewers will give a hard pass to a show like that, but the content was something to be hold.
There’s no way around it. It’s violence porn. The body count is substantial and downright disgusting. And yet, there’s also a metaphor for the game of life, how every day we wake up and play a game within our own little world. If we screw up badly, catastrophic events unfold. We lose our jobs, our families, our livelihoods, all that and more can happen with a single error in judgment.
True, it’s unlikely that an error will get you instantly shot (although sadly that often does happen) but as Squid Game players are turned into cannon fodder over insignificant errors while playing kids’ games (i.e. drop a marble and you’re dead) the message is clear – life is a game and if you screw up, you lose big time.
I thought the first season would be a one and done. The game was presented as so vile and treacherous, the villains as so ruthless and cunning, than anyone, such as the protagonist Gi-Hun, who manages to escape with his life and a big bag of money would run as far away from the game as possible, never to return.
But darned if they didn’t find a way to make the new season interesting and watchable. Here, Gi-Hun has gone from pathetic doofus in S1 to hardened tough guy in S2. Surviving the Squid Game will do that to you. He has used his winnings to recruit a legion of mob flunkies to search for “the recruiter,” that ne’er-do-well who tricks unsuspecting rubes into joining the game.
Gi-Hun manages to connive his way back into the latest iteration of the game, hoping to take it down from the inside. But along the way, he will have to play, and with a new cast of players, including an old friend, a mom/son duo, a trans ex-soldier, an evil rapper, an expecting mom to be, a crypto coin fraudster and more.
Detective Hwang is back, still leading the chase to bring down his brother, the evil “Front Man” behind the games.
If I tell you much more, I’ll spoil it all. But I’ve watched it twice and even went back to watch the first season, all since S2 dropped the day after Christmas. To get that much attention from me is something.
Let me say up front that if you like horror movies, you’ll like this one. If you don’t like horror movies, then you won’t. I genuinely don’t like horror movies. I feel like there are enough horrors in life already to bother with fictional ones, but this was such a dreadful holiday movie season that I had to seek entertainment somewhere. Personally, I didn’t find it here but again, like I said, that’s because I don’t like horror movies. If you do, this one is for you, and artistic one at that.
If you’ve seen Robert Eggers’ past movies (The Northman, for example), you know this is a director who doesn’t play around with historical accuracy. True, it’s difficult to recreate long ago times but this movie maker actually tries. You won’t find any Netflixian flourishes here. The characters don’t speak as though they are the only ultra woke 2020s folk suffering through the backward days of 1838. There’s no super woke polyracial, polyamorous lesbian running the show, bossing dudes around and kicking the asses of 300 pound goons four times her size. Here, the English spoken is old timey indeed, as are the attitudes. Men are the caretakers of women, who obey their husbands and seek their protection. Ahh, the good old days. What, you’re going to complain? OK well I can handle 3.5 angry complaint letters. No problem, nerds.
Action movie buffs might lament this also leads to a lack of fun. There’s no wacky scientist with ahead of their time, CGI dependent inventions to defeat the monster and his hordes of CGI infused minions, for example. There’s just Count Orlok, Temu Dracula, if you will, an East European royal who hides in the shadows for a good chunk of the film. Played by Bill Skarsgard, he frightens you with his brooding voice long before you see his hideous, even more scary appearance on film.
This is a movie where typecast actors, and perhaps one soon to be typecast young actress, prevail. Skarsgard has been Hollywood’s go to guy to for years now, ever since IT, to play monsters made with multiple layers of prosthetics. Critics are calling him the modern equivalent of Bella Lugosi or Lon Chaney.
Nicholas Hoult gives us his second turn as an affable nerd who is swept by chance into the world of vampirism and he struggles his way out of it despite being visibly scared shitless all the while. His first such turn was as the titular character in the recent comedy, Renfield.
Willem DeFoe has cornered the market on playing super creepy assholes and does it again as occult scholar, Professor Von Franz. He is the dude who has done the research on how to defeat Orlok, but no one wants to believe the villainous vamp or his supernatural powers are for realsies and they definitely don’t want to use Von Franz’s methods, which are, at times, almost as evil as Orlok’s.
Aaron-Taylor Harding plays the role he plays best – the handsome dumb guy. Here, he stars as Friedrich, the friend of Hoult’s Hutter, entrusted with the care of Hutter’s wife, Ellen, while Hutter is away on a business trip to Orlok’s castle that goes awry – because, you know, it’s 1838 and women can’t be left alone by themselves, especially this one who suffers from super nasty nightmares.
Friedrich doesn’t believe in any of this nonsense and lack of belief in evil is the true villain that Von Franz has to fight in this film. While Von Franz comes across as a batshit nutter, the tables are eventually turned and anyone who doesn’t believe in evil (I mean, if you believe in good then you’re nuts if you don’t believe in evil, right?) comes across as the batshit nutter.
Stealing the show is Lily-Rose Depp, the 25 year old daughter of our beloved Captain Jack Sparrow, Johnny Depp. As an 1838 woman who flails about wildly, speaking in tongues as she is possessed by Orlok, she steals the show and proves her mettle to handle any Tim Burton-esque, Victorian creepo that her old man, or his female counterpart, Helena Bonham Carter, played before her. No, Tim Burton is not involved in this film, but Eggers’ directorial style can be best described as Tim Burton-esque, but without the flair, or humor and instead, just straight up depression and fear.
At any rate, Lily-Rose does her old man proud and this will no doubt be the breakout role that secures her many a movie deal in the years to come. Expect to see more of her.
Film buffs are aware that Nosferatu is basically a rip-off of Dracula. It hearkens back to the early days of film when Hollywood wanted to make a vampire tale based on Bram Stroker’s Dracula but one can assume, didn’t want to pay royalties, so they just created Count Orlok instead. This film borrows from both tales – Nosferatu and Dracula, with the central premise being that a young lawyer is invited to the Count’s castle under the auspices of securing a property purchase deal, only to unwittingly unleash hell on earth and must fight to put this evil genie back in its bottle.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy, but keep it away from my shelf, please. Too scary for my tastes, but you’ll like it if you’re a big weirdo. I must protest that this film is out of place in the holiday movie season. Sure, it takes place during a cold winter but really Hollywood? A horror film at Christmas time? This was truly a terrible holiday movie season.
Bookshelf Battle 