All heists in Den Of Thieves 2 are based on real heists (exclusively)

Note: The rest of this interview contains… Spoilers For “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera”, proceed accordingly.

I’d love to hear more about Big Nick’s arc specifically. There’s a nice revelation that happens at the end where Nick turns these people over to the police, but he’s at such a low point that it seems plausible that he could have legitimately turned it around. So tell me about the change you wanted the audience to experience with this character in this movie versus what we saw in the first movie.

This is, again, talking about what we just talked about. Is it like Nick is in his life when he goes on this trip? He probably went there with one goal in mind: “I’m going down without me. This motherfucker makes me mad. He got away with it.” Then he gets there and meets local law enforcement, but he doesn’t get along with them. They treat him like ***. He is in a foreign place and suddenly sees someone he knows, even though it is Donnie, he is a familiar face. It’s like you’re traveling somewhere in some part of the world and you see someone (and you) say, “Oh my God, what’s up, man?” There’s an instant connection there, and he’s going through all these emotions. It’s like a roller coaster, that’s constant ups and downs. We wanted to play with that throughout the movie to get a feel for it Which way will it go? And to understand the journey, the emotional roller coaster he’s on.

But at the end of the day, it’s like, “Man, I’m a cop. I can’t do this.” But at the same time, he said, “This is a lot of fun.” And the technical advisor and consultant, my friend who worked with us on “Den 1,” Jay, we talked to him a lot about the character of Nick in “Den 2.” And Jay was an undercover cop for years and years, and there was a push and pull, right? You get into a world, and you’re excited and excited, and “I’m going to shoot these guys down,” and then you get to know them and you kind of like them. And when the time comes to drop them, you’ll feel like crap. They almost became a surrogate family for him. Now he’s ruining it. It’s like, “My family life at home has failed. Now I have this new family and now I’m disappointing them, too.” He feels terrible. It’s like, “Who am I? What do I do?” It’s a bit of an identity crisis.

There are a lot of great heist movies that take advantage of this. I think of “Point Break,” and the “Fast and Furious” movies do that too. So, in terms of movie references, there are obviously a million heist movies out there. Did you see any of them preparing for this, either for aspects you wanted to honor or for things you knew you would He didn’t do that want to do?

I watched 10 minutes of the first Fast and Furious movie and none of the rest. None of them. It was truly that Ronin had a great influence. “Gomorrah,” “Suburra,” and then a lot of the old French New Wave films like Melville, “Le Cercle Rouge,” “Rififi,” “Borsalino,” all those great films. I mean I’ve seen most of the old school classics. Honestly, there’s a lot of new stuff that I haven’t seen much of. But it’s really about, you do your research, you go out into the world, and you do what you want. You try to be unique and original for yourself. You’re not really trying to… I mean, obviously as artists, we all have influences, of course, but there wasn’t anything really specific that we were (aiming for), in terms of homage. More energy and liveliness in some films. Ronin was a big character, again, an American character in Europe and sort of a mixture of American and European cinema, right? But there was no specific homage, no.

Did you ever worry that, because it had been so many years since the first movie, that another modern heist movie would come along and have a very similar story or something. Do you ever worry about that as a director at all?

I mean you always do, you know what I mean? I’ve gone through things in the past as a writer where you write a script and a spec, and it’s great, and then suddenly you realize there’s something very similar. I went through this years ago, where I worked on a project called “The Company,” and then when we were about to set it up and start making it, “The Recruit” came out with Colin Farrell and Al Pacino. Honestly, it was basically the same movie. This killed our film. They beat us to the punch by a few months. So, yeah, of course you kind of think about it, but you have to give it your best, do your thing, and hope for the best, right?