GERARD BULTER STARS BIG AND BEARDED IN 'DEN OF THIEVES'

Year of Release: 2018

If Randall "Tex" Cobb played COLUMBO, you'd have Gerard Butler as Big Nick O'Brien, a bad cop without any good cops to counterbalance or compare with, leaving middleman Donnie (O'Shea Jackson) as a wishbone between the law and a small group of bank-robbing tough guys led by Pablo Schreiber's Merriman, who, verses Butler's formidably flawed bearded brawler, once a gang-member, gives this completely entertaining heist/thriller/action flick it's very own genre, Intimidation...

Score: ****

With loads of edgy testosterone-driven angst between a botched rudimentary escape and the planned future heist, it's not just for the taut "street theater" dialogue, but to flesh out the characters, giving Butler a chance to stretch beyond his usual dependably muscular hero...

Till the somewhat pretentious, drawn-out conclusion (with more twists than a pretzel) and unlike other heist films borrowing from the quirky Quentin Tarantino template, DEN OF THIEVES plays more like a no-nonsense modern Western, the city of Los Angeles shown in bleak asphalt exteriors and darkened neon interiors — then shaping into a sort of hard-edge Neo Noir since everyone on board has their own not-so-subtle ambiguity about bending (cops) or breaking (robbers) the law.