Den of Thieves

What’s not to like in this competitive pecker-pull shot in and around Atlanta to mimic Los Angeles? (Maybe because once you take a couple of aerial shots above the freeway, city blocks and landfills have that universal ambiance for a bank heist!) The plausible but paltry plotline has an empty cash delivery truck serving as the active ingredient for knocking over an impenetrable federal reserve bank by switching out recent bills with sequential numbers for unfit, obsolete currency tagged to be shredded. It presents a risky proposition for the obligatory diverse-but-proficient robbery crew (including Curtis Jackson and O’Shea Jackson), led by Ray Merriman (Pablo Schreiber) as an Iraqi war vet at odds against Big Nick (Gerard Butler), the maverick head of the LA County Sheriff’s Department out to solve a string of heist dating back to the early ’90s. It’s full of clichés – the comparable cop and his con counterpart, mistrust amongst the thieves and an impossible target – but it makes loads more sense than Baby Driver!

[R]