There's a reason Heat keeps coming up in people's reviews and comparisons; it became a classic and a blueprint that spawned countless copycats and 'inspired' even more movies or scenes in movies after it. Den of Thieves isn't so much 'inspired' by Heat, as it is a rip off of pretty much everything Heat did, only it does it worse. The decent (though not stellar) acting performances and the decent (though not special) action sequences would maybe warrant a 6/10. But the fairly substantial plot holes, and the fact the characters aren't fleshed out enough for us to care too much about them despite its liberal runtime, peg this down to a generous 4. I'll leave a couple that particularly stood out, and you can get the idea:
- Firstly, there is no Federal Reserve in LA. Granted, a forgivable suspension of disbelief but already we're off to a rough start, notwithstanding the opening text about one bank robbery every 48 minutes which has never been true.
Less forgivable however is how the basic premise of the heist is flawed from conception:
- $30 million dollars in 100s would be around 300kg and not a couple small bags sent down a trash shoot
- The EMP used (if at all possible) would surely knock out all electronics (including the communicators and radios used) not just selectively the motion sensors and camera in the room
- Donnie posing as a delivery guy would not simply be allowed to roam around such a high security facility; he'd either leave his delivery in the lobby for the employee to come up, someone else to take down, or he'd be escorted the whole way down and back
- Donnie couldn't simply shrug away not being signed in on the day of the heist. He literally says "I don't know what to tell you man, I signed in with the guy on the last shift" and the guard lets him off, yet there's a half a dozen other guards in the lobby who wouldn't have seen him enter just a few minutes prior as he'd be claiming unless what? They all changed shift? Unlikely in the middle of the day. Also the delivery wouldn't take more than 5-10min to drop off, so they'd have to choreograph his exit so well as to be only a few minutes after a shift change, and even then, the new shift could simply call the previous guard and ask if he let in a delivery guy. Especially since Donnie seems to use an old access tag that a) he didn't hand back on exit a couple days ago? And b) would've surely been flagged as missing in such a high security complex.
- A slick robbery crew like that wouldn't go through with their plan with that much heat on; the cops know the day *and* location they're robbing. Especially after they know one of their members was picked up by police and might've been under surveillance since the start compromising their whole plan. Even less so, to add on a decoy robbery that introduces more risks in an attempt to buy themselves more time.
- Nick enters the decoy bank fairly soon after the 'vault' explosion and discovers they're gone and sets off for the 'Federal Reserve' after them (presumably remembering Donnie was scoping it out?). So there's not enough time for the robbers to escape, change outfits/gear/cars, get to the Fed themselves and complete the whole robbery before Nick catches up. Also, why wouldn't Nick simply radio through to the Fed informing them they are being robbed and send pictures of who to look for and the whole place would go on lockdown.
- I also can't quite remember how Nick finds out about the decoy robbery? He doesn't find out from Donnie who himself finds out on the day that there was a "change of plan".
Anyway, just from the above it's very clear the robbery would never get off the ground let alone see completion, and when the 'clever' part of the movie is glaringly flawed it takes away from the whole movie. There's a couple other classic movie conveniences - Nick happening upon Donnie a few blocks/streets away after leaving the bank, how lucky they had the same route! Nick somehow intercepting the crew leaving the salvage yard despite them having a significant head start on him...you could go on.
The final thing I will mention is the unnecessary end twist that Donnie was actually a genius mastermind and planned to switch the money with the help of his own crew that's dues ex machina'd in. It's cheap and there's simply not enough groundwork laid down to make it work. He also lets himself get into far too many compromising situations, any one of which could've seen him dead or kicked off the crew. His plan would also entirely depend on Nick actually catching and killing everyone in the crew he's about to betray otherwise they would undoubtedly go/send someone after him for revenge.
You could go on. But really, the bottom line is the plot simply falls way far below what this movie wants to be. If you want to see that, just invest a similar amount of time and rewatch the movie Den of Thieves tries to be.