The ‘Den of Thieves 2’ Trailer Is Here and Superfan Christian Petzold Should Be Extremely Happy

Gerard Butler and O’Shea Jackson, Jr. are back for more cops-and-criminals action in “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera,” the sequel to the 2018 heist thriller that’s opening January 10 and now has an official trailer you can watch below.

For cinephiles, you can expect more muscular filmmaking from director Christian Gudegast and more odd slips of Butler’s Scottish brogue into random lines of dialogue. And this time with Salvatore Esposito, star of the “Gomorrah” series who “Fargo” fans will also remember as a Fascist thug on Season 4 of the FX show. (The official synopsis of the Lionsgate film is “Immediately following the events of ‘Den of Thieves,’ sheriff ‘Big Nick’ O’Brien (Butler) is tracking down Donnie Wilson (Jackson), who escaped to Europe and is planning another heist.”)

You can also expect something else: Because this “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera” trailer has been released, German arthouse auteur Christian Petzold, director of such moving, thoughtful festival hits as “Phoenix,” “Undine,” and “Afire,” is probably very happy right now.

He’s an avowed fan of the original “Den of Thieves” and for more reasons than just that he and its director share a first name. In fact, Petzold went so far as to name “Den of Thieves” to a list Film at Lincoln Center commissioned from directors in 2018 of “10 Favorite Films of the Past 10 Years” for which the directors would then come to the New York repertory cinema and introduce their favorites before they screened.

Watch the trailer for “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera” below, and then we’ll share more of why Petzold is such a fan.

In his remarks for Film at Lincoln Center, in conversation with Dennis Lim, Petzold elaborated on why “Den of Thieves” is such a fave.

“When I have to make this list… for me when somebody says to make a list of the 10 best soccer players ever it destroys my whole week, because I’m thinking and thinking and thinking,” Petzold said. “For nerds, it’s like suicide: You have to make lists. So I said I want to write down 10 movies that are directly in my head. And this movie, everyone in all my interviews today started with this question [of why Petzold picked ‘Den of Thieves’]. It’s not a joke. It’s one of the best movies I saw in the last years, and it’s something to do with we have more festivals than cinemas in the world.

He continued: “We have more movies with a subject, for example [like] the lemon tree between Gaza and Israel. And there’s an Arabian girl and an Israeli boy and they love each other and [tend] a lemon tree, something like that. All these subject movies, I hate so much. Because they are made for festivals. My son said to me, let’s go to a cinema, just a cheap cinema not far away from our flat. There are 10 screens, and ‘Criminal Squad,’ the German title [of ‘Den of Thieves’], was playing inside. Butler, okay, I heard about that. Let’s go inside. Two hours and twenty minutes. This was a real movie with people who have skill, who have work, who have tattoos, real tattoos, who can smoke. Really smoke, not “artist smoking.” They’re real smokers. They can shoot. They have a plan. It’s a heist movie, and I think that’s moviemaking. They don’t want to have a lemon tree in Gaza, they want to have money. And you can see it, the movie itself has skill.

“Because to make a movie has something to do with robbing a bank. You have to create a team. You have to find people who are loyal. You can feel and see in that movie. You can see also the working class who are going down, and the industrial production work which has disappeared, the ruins of a fantastic industrial working class you can find in this movie. I told all my nerd friends from the Berlin School ‘this is a great movie,’ they started laughing, but they come back the next evening and their thumbs are up. Two thumbs. For me, it’s really a good movie, but everybody who sees that list [of mine] is talking about the Joachim Trier movie or the Lars von Trier movie, and yet this one they don’t believe. But I can say, this is a great movie.”

If that isn’t an endorsement of “Den of Thieves,” what is? He must be on cloud nine right now with the release of the sequel’s trailer.

What we want now? Petzold, cast Gerard Butler in one of your movies.

“Den of Thieves 2: Pantera” opens in theaters January 10.