Reviews & Ratings for
Den of Thieves (2018)

In Los Angeles, a team of former MARSOC Marines led by Ray Merrimen (Pablo Schreiber) hijack an armored truck. The ensuing shootout with police leaves several dead, including one of Merrimen's crew, as the hijackers escape with the empty truck. LASD Detective Nick O'Brien investigates the robbery, making the recently paroled Merrimen his prime suspect. Nick's team kidnaps Donnie Wilson, a bartender who confesses to acting as the thieves’ unarmed getaway driver. He describes a large sum of cash stolen from a stadium by the crew, but denies knowing their future plans and is released.

Merrimen and his crew prepare to rob the heavily guarded Federal Reserve: with approximately $30 million in old bills removed from circulation each day, they plan to steal the untraceable money before it is shredded. Nick's team tails Donnie, who is hired as a Chinese food delivery driver, allowing him to deliver inside the Federal Reserve. A confrontation with Nick leads Merrimen's crew to suspect Donnie is an informant. Interrogated at gunpoint, he admits he was questioned by Nick; to his surprise, Merrimen orders him to tell Nick when the heist is taking place. Donnie informs Nick but denies knowing the location. Nick sleeps with Merrimen’s girlfriend, who – acting on Merrimen’s instructions – reveals the crew will be robbing a bank in Pico Rivera.

On the day of the heist, as Nick’s team waits nearby, Merrimen's crew takes the Pico Rivera bank hostage, demanding a ransom and a helicopter. When the FBI attempt to negotiate, the crew appears to execute a female hostage. The thieves access the vault and detonate explosives inside, leading Nick to realize this is not their usual M.O. He impatiently storms the bank himself to find the hostages alive, bound and hooded while the thieves have blown their way into the sewers and escaped.

Merrimen and his right-hand man Levi infiltrate the Federal Reserve, using the stolen armored truck and stadium money to pose as guards dropping off cash. Donnie, hidden inside a cart of cash, is wheeled inside a counting room as the thieves disrupt the room’s power, making it seem like a common brownout. The employees are briefly sent away, and Donnie triggers an electromagnetic pulse to disable the room’s cameras as he sends the bills earmarked for shredding safely down the trash chute. Crawling through an air duct to the restroom, he leaves the building in his delivery uniform as Merrimen and Levi depart.

A garbage truck picks up the trash containing the money and is intercepted by the thieves. Nick's team capture Donnie and beat him into revealing Merrimen's escape route. Stuck in traffic, Merrimen’s crew spot Nick’s team approaching and exchange fire; Deputy “Borracho” and thief Bosco are killed. Fleeing on foot with Nick in close pursuit, Levi is killed and Merrimen is severely wounded. Cornered, Merrimen raises his empty gun, forcing Nick to fatally shoot him. Instead of the money, only bags of shredded paper are found in Merrimen’s vehicle, and the FBI inform Nick that all currency is accounted for at the Federal Reserve, while Donnie has escaped.

Nick revisits Donnie’s bar only to learn he has quit. Noticing the bar is frequented by Federal Reserve employees, and spotting a picture of Donnie and his friends, Nick realizes Donnie is the heist’s true mastermind: gathering information from bar patrons, he was able to plan the entire robbery, and recruited his friends to intercept the money and double-cross Merrimen's crew. Having shipped the money offshore to Panama and escaped to London with his accomplices, Donnie is working at another bar across from a diamond exchange – his next target.