Director Christian Gudegast’s jazzed-up 2018 “Heat” homage “Den of Thieves” has become something of a cult hit in the years since its release, thanks in large part to Gerard Butler’s rollicking, gaunt performance as “Big Nick.” in the main role. O’Brien, a dirty detective (and gang member) with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department who is on the trail of the well-connected master thief Merrimen (Pablo Schreiber).

If “Den of Thieves” was a kind of “Dumb Heat”, then the sequel “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera” is a homage to another thriller by Robert De Niro, “Ronin”, with chase scenes in the hairpin turns in the hills of Nice, France, and a new group of experienced thieves led by a charismatic woman, Jovanna (Evin Ahmad). Meanwhile, Donnie Wilson (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), the promising young driver from the first film who overtook both Big Nick and Merrimen, has joined the Serbian Mafia (aka Pantera) on some expensive diamond heists. Cat burglars on the French Riviera? Sounds like “To Catch a Den of Thieves” not?

In his loose remakes of the De Niro filmography, Gudegast now knows that Big Nick is the charm, so he must take our man – the ink on his divorce papers still wet – to France, hot on young Donnie’s heels. And so “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera” becomes a travelogue for our antihero, an “A Propos de Nick,” if you will. While he enjoyed donuts, fried chicken and a glass of wine in the first film, he now drinks espresso and enjoys croy-sants and gelato in Europe.

Nick shows up in France under the guise of identifying his suspect after tracking down Donnie’s bank account, but all too easily he runs into Donnie and the Pantera crew and teams up with them to rob the World Diamond Center vault, which is home to a large pink diamond they stole from a plane in Antwerp, Belgium.

Nick is fascinated by his thieving enemies, mesmerized by them, and now has nothing left to lose. He claims he is tired of hunting. So instead of going toe-to-toe with snarling ex-con/ex-Long Beach High School football star Merrimen in a Torrance Benihana, he settles in with the affable Donnie (who poses as Jean-Jacques) in a French club , a rich man) from diamond dealer) and drunk on the scooter to get kebab. It’s amusing, but it’s not exactly the same electrifying tension that animated the first film.

“Pantera” is a little too silly, leaning into the goofy side of Nick’s personality. The first film was played straight, which is why it worked so well, and no one in Pantera comes close to Schreiber’s raging intensity and seething anger, making it more of a buddy comedy between Donnie and Nick. The Serbian gang members are not well established and the Sicilian mafiosos who also enter the ring are not developed as real antagonists. In fact, they all start to merge into a mass of indistinguishable Euro-gangsters, and there’s no real sense of danger.

Gudegast tackled the script alone (he co-wrote the first film with Prison Break showrunner Paul T. Scheuring), and while he has a knack for inventive heists, the sequel doesn’t boast the lore of its predecessor relies heavily on coincidences and deus ex machina to move things along. At a whopping 2 hours and 24 minutes, the film is limp, not jacked, and lacks an unpredictable live-wire element.

While it’s fun to reconnect with Big Nick and watch him try new dishes, there’s just something missing from this hackneyed “Ronin” rip-off – danger. It seems that Gudegast and his characters set off for Europe with few ideas and the fabric of this world is not as tightly woven as the original. Well, we’ll always have Torrance.