_Den of Thieves_ is like the male reproductive organ: exciting at each end but long and boring in the middle.

It's a trap most films of this genre fall into. An action scene at the beginning to grab our attention and one at the end for a climax, but in the middle nothing but cliches. And with the European version clocking in at TWO HOURS AND TWENTY MINUTES (WTF!?) there's **a lot** of room for cliches.

The renegade police squad as bent as the criminal gang they're pursuing is a cliche we've come to expect, but too much time is wasted demonstrating how '3-dimensional' and 'fleshed out' these men are. To be sure, there's enough beefcake here to choke the deepest of throats (Gerard Butler, Pablo Schreiber and 50 Cent are so cut their shirts keep falling off), so they're 3D and fleshed out all right, but family men? We're meant to believe they consider family important, yet the only proof of that we're given is they feel guilty every time they treat their families like shite.

It's a shame, really. Christian Gudegast does a competent job directing the action and suspense, but he should've stuck to that rather than drawing so heavily on the source material (a 1992 non-fiction book by Pulitzer Prize winning author James B. Stewart).

No, Den of Thieves is not the epic cops and robbers film it thinks it is. It's simply a giant fake boob: over-inflated, self-aggrandizing and not as unique as it thinks it is.