Rewatchables Reference

• Bill's nominees: The donut store robbery opening (eerie late-night LA, 'we're cop killers now'), Big Nick arriving at the crime scene and eating a bloody donut, the Benihana stare-down, the shooting range showdown, the fake Pico Savings and Loan robbery/Donnie in the bank room stealing cash, and the final 25 minutes (shootout through the ending).
• CR: Benihana is his heart, the final corridor shootout is his head. From the moment Big Nick leaves the playground crying and everybody starts putting vests on, 'it's an hour and 6 minutes of perfect cinema' – the savings and loan robbery, the Fed heist, and the corridor shootout.
• Van: The divorce signing scene – Big Nick crashes his ex-wife's date, eats the guy's lamb chops, drinks his drinks. 'Any scene where you separate the sharks from the guppies.' The new boyfriend is destroyed: 'Call the cops.' Nick: 'I am the cops.'

• Bill: Smoking in bars in LA ('now they would just come in and taser you'). Also: the Showtime cable bump – this was the last era where a movie could get a second life from being on a cable guide rather than a streaming thumbnail.
• Van: 'Strippers but no BBLs. If you go into that strip club now, there's gonna be some jiggle in that bitch.'
• CR: The unspoken testosterone stares between characters – 'in 2024 they would probably be looking at their phones.'

• Bill: The Donnie twist – knowing what he's up to the whole time makes rewatches incredibly fun. The art of bartending quote: 'Lots of reps, I'm in complete control of my environment. People don't even know' – great foreshadowing.
• CR: The opening text card about bank robberies is 'so needlessly hard, it's so cool' – up there with Sicario's 'In Mexico, 'Sicario' means hitman' as the two greatest title cards ever. Also: opening your movie with a huge crime you then have to top (like Dark Knight, 'Sicario', Drive, The Matrix).
• Bill: Suit stores, guys hanging out trying on leather jackets and dusters. The UFC fighters (Max Holloway). Good one-liners ('Come on, give me a hug, we'll save a fortune in therapy'). Butler's leather jackets – 'leathery the way the character is leathery.' The big board with photos of the crew. FBI slander taken to the next level: 'a vegan FBI cook who plays tennis.'

• Bill: The shock value of the ending – after seeing it multiple times, it's not a shock anymore. Also: Big Nick crying outside the fence at his daughter's school. Filming in Atlanta pretending to be LA.
• Van: Eating the donuts from the crime scene floor. 'We got Olympic donuts, we don't even want them donuts no more.'
• CR: The 'Ray Merriman cut' – you could end the movie when Ray and Levoux die, like Heat. The Donnie stuff unlocks everything after, but the ending loses its punch on rewatches.

Bill: The final traffic shootout. CR: The drum shot. Both agreed it looked great.

Bill: Kid Cudi's 'Pursuit of Happiness.' Not a lot of music with lyrics in the movie, but 'What It's Like' by Everlast gets squeezed in there – 'nice little late 90s, baby.'

Bill: Fifty cars between the robbers and cops at the end – the cops would not realistically decide to turn a traffic standstill into a shootout. 'It's a class action suit a week later.' CR: No weak link – 'I have a Vincent Chase' (meaning it's so good he can't find one).

Gerard Butler – not only wins this, it's one of the reasons the movie is as fun as it is. 'He's going for it the entire fucking time.' Gets a wasted scene, a brutally hungover scene, and a crying scene – the full gamut of emotions.

Bill lists all the Heat parallels: bang-guys-over-the-top cop in a bad relationship, two sides casing each other, big shootouts at beginning and end, hero cop confronting wife's new guy, messed up hero cop with his daughter, black cop sidekick. His take: 'I'm fine with all of it. We love Heat about as much as they do. Why can't more movies simulate Heat?'

No confirmed casting what-ifs found – the movie hasn't been out long enough for the behind-the-scenes details to leak. The director Christian Gudegast was in the room but didn't share specifics. Bill noted 2019 Big Nick candidates were Nic Cage (who aged out) and now Pedro Pascal, Wagner Moura, or Liev Schreiber. CR: 'Pablo Schreiber was always headed here.'

• CR: Timothy Chalamet as Young Nick in a prequel – early days on the LAPD, getting acquainted with the LA underworld.
• Bill: Ali Larter's character from Landman as Big Nick's ex-wife – 'just going crazy for crazy.' CR: 'I don't think she would have as gracefully as Deb did.'
• Bill (from the first pod): Dave Chappelle as Butler's sidekick cop – swimming against type, three moments busting Big Nick's balls. But concluded he'd actually wouldn't change the cast. CR: Shane Gillis as Murph for comic relief.

Bill's winner: Evan Jones – known from 'Shot Caller'. Dawn Olivieri (Big Nick's wife) has been in a bunch of stuff. Van: a Russian guy who plays one of the truck drivers – 'I see him in stuff all the time.'

• Bill: The two ladies ordering Chinese food in the bank – only in two scenes but bringing the heat. One's pissed off: 'go stop that guy.'
• Van: The FBI guy (the vegan tennis player) – 'really turning it on.'

• Christian Gudegast started writing the movie in 2003 – a 15-year odyssey to the screen.
• Released as 'Criminal Squad' in some countries. Ziggy's bar in the film is Johnny's Hideaway in Atlanta. The $100 bill in the closing credits has serial number .00002018.
• A military consultant ran separate boot camps for both the cops' and robbers' sides of the cast.
• CR did deep research on Long Beach Poly vs South Torrance: Poly is definitively the better program (DeSean Jackson, Antonio Pierce). Big Nick's trash talk about crushing them is historically dubious.

• Gerard Butler: 300 is the first peak, 'Den of Thieves' is the second peak. CR: 'More conversations now about 'Den of Thieves' than 300.' Van: '300 is probably bigger but he's more this guy now.'
• Pablo Schreiber: This or The Wire. Bill: 'I think it's this.'
• O'Shea Jackson Jr: Straight Outta Compton or this. Bill thinks 'Den of Thieves' 2 will clinch it.
• 50 Cent: Movie apex (overall apex is the Get Rich or Die Tryin' album era).
• Benihana in a movie: Yes (confirmed by the director as a real Benihana).
• Suit stores: Apex mountain for all suit stores ever – 'a very specific kind where you can get a suit, a leather duster, and cowboy boots.'
• Long Beach Poly vs South Torrance: Definitely apex for South Torrance ('otherwise it's Chad Morton').
• Federal Reserve Bank in Los Angeles: Van didn't even know it was a thing.
• Sons of Heat/second-generation Heat movies: This vs 'The Town'. Bill: 'What about Triple Frontier?' Van: 'The Town is much more on the nose.'
• Shooting ranges in a movie: Bill still has 'Beverly Hills Cop' 2.
• Drinking milk from the carton: Probably Anchorman.
• Bad things at a donut store: Still 'Boogie Nights'.

• Bill: Scottish Gerard Butler as a South Torrance high school football star. Hawthorne to Wilmington is 14 miles – 'a long way' in LA. Merriman's running form wasn't athletic enough for a former football star. $30M in $100 bills weighs 661.5 lbs – Donnie dumping that through tiny bags in 2 minutes is suspect.
• CR: The Chinese food delivery guy gets inside the Fed and wanders around the cafeteria freely. 'It takes me 10 minutes to wait for Uber Eats at Spotify, but this guy walks right in with two bags.' They need a tighter Chinese food delivery protocol at the Fed.
• Van: When Big Nick says 'you got a small pecker for a black guy' to Donnie, Donnie says nothing in response. Van's incredulous: 'No, I'm gonna tell you right now, you don't even know what average is.' His biggest nitpick ever.
• Bill: Merriman knowing 53 attempted robberies of the Fed – how does he get that information? Also: how many days was the Chinese food sitting above the bathroom? At least five. CR: 'Beef and broccoli can smell pretty off in two hours in the fridge. Three days in an air duct...'
• CR: Merriman is super offended by Big Nick's behavior at Benihana ('I got family here bro') but then sends his girlfriend to sleep with Big Nick as a misdirection. 'Practice what you preach.'
• Bill: The Montebello to Federal Reserve to Alameda Corridor route and traffic – they put all this thought into robbing the bank but never factored in traffic. CR: 'The right lane being closed is the most quintessentially LA thing in the movie.'

Getting a sequel ('Den of Thieves' 2: Pantera). CR: Would also take a prequel. Van: 'A prequel would be a great way to bring Merriman's character back.' CR: 'We have to shrink him a little bit.'

Van and Bill: Script – Christian Gudegast (who's in the room). CR: 'If not Christian, I'd go Pablo Schreiber.'

• Bill: Best and worst job for the armored truck crew? Worst is sitting in the back ('that guy always gets blown up'). Van: 'What kind of people are the armored car people? If they got armor piercing rounds, I'm like yo, take it.'
• CR: Was Ray Merriman named as a tribute to NFL's Shawne Merriman?
• Bill: How would Van talk his way out of Big Nick's accidental stripper text? Van delivers a masterclass in deflection: blame a friend's dead phone, accuse her of being paranoid, demand the keys, gaslight completely.

Bill: Pablo Schreiber's bulletproof vest – riddled with about 2,000 bullet spots. Van: One of the donuts with a little bit of blood on it (stunt donut). CR: The donuts or Donnie's Trans Am.

Bill: Never underestimate a bartender. Also: if you're going to spend 10 weeks casing a bank, maybe figure out a better traffic situation for the getaway.

CR: 'Den of Thieves' 2: Pantera – the obvious and correct answer.

• Bill: Christian Gudegast – 15 years working on a movie, then it leads to a sequel years later. Also Pablo Schreiber – 'makes you wonder, should there have been more stuff for him? Could there have been a signature action franchise?'
• Van: 'Is it possible that the movie won the movie? Very rarely is a film thought about so highly by everyone who's seen it. The movie was able to maintain that kinetic energy.' CR: 'I'm gonna try this in three weeks and he's gonna be like, you can't do that.'