'Den Of Thieves' Offers An Epic Cops And Robbers Tale, Re-'Heat'ed
Christian Gudegast's film about a bank heist in L.A. borrows so freely from Michael Mann's 1995 film Heat it never quite recovers from the deep cinematic debt.
There's something unfair about comparing any to Michael Mann's even if you dissent from the popular — and one hundred percent — notion that is the best cops-and-robbers movie ever made. For one thing, is more like a movie-plus-expansion pack, a remake of a film Mann had written and directed for network television some years earlier, upgraded with a lavish budget and an A-list cast. It was at least the third Mann project to draw inspiration from the life of Chuck Adamson, also borrowed thematic material and even dialogue from Adamson's '80s NBC series on which Mann served as executive producer.) Mann would make other significant films afterward but is the document that feels most singularly like his life's work.
