Butler enters den of thieves
Discover the dark side of Los Angeles where cops and robbers go head-to-head in Gerard Butler’s latest action thriller movie, Den of Thieves.
Set in contemporary Los Angeles, Den of Thieves is a crime saga which follows the intersecting and often personally connected lives of the Regulators, an elite unit of the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department; and the Outlaws, the state’s most successful bank robbery crew.
The Regulators is led by alpha dog “Big Nick” O’Brien played by Gerard. He’s a hard-drinking career detective who will stop at nothing to put an end to the Outlaws’ crime spree. The Outlaws is led by the icy and calm Ray Merriman played by Pablo Schreiber. The Outlaws operates with military precision, meticulous planning and employs subject matter expertise — all skills acquired from military special ops service and prison stints.
After taunting the authorities for years with increasingly ambitious unsolved robberies, Outlaws leader Merriman sets his sights on the ultimate heist: infiltrating the Los Angeles branch of the Federal Reserve and steal $30 million of unfit US currency being taken out of circulation before it can be shredded and destroyed. They plan to steal money that nobody is looking for.
Meanwhile, The Regulators starts a tense game of cat and mouse as the members work to tie the Outlaws to a string of unsolved heists and anticipate their next move. In a series of escalating confrontations, it soon becomes apparent that neither side plays by traditional rules and there are no heroes or villains in the intricate face-off. In the end, it’s an explosive battle between equallymatched opposites, reaching a thrilling and entirely unexpected climax.
Den of Thieves is written and directed by Christian Gudegast, writer of the worldwide smash hit London Has Fallen. He was reading Where the Money Is, a nonfiction book about how L.A. became the bank robbery capital of the world, when he saw a photo in the Los Angeles Times; the photo, taken at the Federal Reserve Bank, was of a massive tub of money. The photo and the book sparked an idea, and Christian wrote the story that would eventually become the basis for the screenplay.
He was particularly drawn to the complex relationships between professional bank robbers and the detectives who hunt them. “I was fascinated by the specificity of their worlds,” says Christian, “and how these two crews operate. Understanding what they do, and why they do it, became the fuel for the movie.”
The film also stars Evan Jones, O’Shea Jackson Jr. and Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson.
Den of Thieves, presented by VIVA International Pictures and MVP Entertainment, is now showing in cinemas nationwide.