Den of Thieves is a 2018 film starring Gerard Butler, Pablo Schreiber, O'Shea Jackson Jr., 50 Cent and Evan Jones, directed and written by Christian Gudegast and produced by Butler, Mark Canton, Alan Siegel and Tucker Tooley.
The film was a financial failure as it generated a loss of $19 million.
Plot
In Los Angeles, a team of robbers led by Ray Merrimen make a violent armed attack and hijack an armored truck. Police officers arrive on the scene and engage in a shootout with the robbers. Eventually, Merrimen and his crew escape with the empty armored truck.
In the morning, Detective Nick O'Brien investigates the crime scene, having been monitoring Merrimen and his crew for a while. Suspecting a local bartender named Donnie for involvement, Nick finds him at the bar and kidnaps him for interrogation. Donnie reveals Merrimen is planning to rob the Federal Reserve on Friday of that week by covertly removing about $30 million in old bills which are scheduled to be shredded after their serial numbers are deleted from computer records.
At their hideout, Merrimen has one of his crew, Levi, roughly interrogate Donnie to ensure he didn't disclose anything about the plan. Meanwhile, Nick goes to a strip club and finds Merrimen's stripper girlfriend, hires her for the night to find out where the heist is going to happen. The next morning, Nick makes a desperate unscheduled effort to see his estranged daughter at her school.
As the day of the heist comes, Merrimen and his crew invade a commercial bank and take hostages. Nick's team arrives outside as the chaos unfolds. The L.A.P.D. negotiator calls and speaks to the bank's manager on behalf of Merrimen. To discourage further time-wasting communications, Merrimen has one of the crew take a hostage to a back room, where he apparently shoots her. The police negotiator then agrees not to communicate again until the robbers' demands (money and helicopter) are about to arrive in over an hour's time. The thieves then blow the vault open and escape through a hole in the floor before Nick’s team come in. They also find that the shooting of the hostage was staged. The thieves needed commercial bank cash so they could make a cash drop-off at the Federal Reserve, the only way to get inside the Federal Reserve building.
Donnie is hidden inside a cash dolly delivered to the Federal Reserve building by Merrimen, and he slips out during a falsely tripped alarm to collect the targeted old bills that have been earmarked for shredding, and he stashes them in bags and throws them in with the refuse, before escaping the cash count-rooms through the air ducts. The cash is dispatched from the Federal Reserve building in a garbage truck that removes shredded bills. Nick’s team catches up to Donnie and seizes him, beating him until he tells them where Merrimen is going.
Merrimen, Bosco, and Levi try to make their escape with the money bags from the waste truck but hit a traffic jam and are blocked. Nick’s team spots them and attempt to shoot them as the robbers try to escape. A shootout occurs initiated by Merrimen, killing one of Nick's men. Levi and Bosco are eventually shot dead, but Merrimen gets away. Nick chases and shoots Merrimen, wounding him. Merrimen raises an empty gun to Nick, forcing Nick to shoot him. As Merrimen lies on the ground dying, Nick kneels and consoles him. When Nick inspects Merrimen's SUV, he only finds bags with shredded paper; he also finds that Donnie has escaped custody.
Nick later goes to Donnie's bar and sees pictures of him with some of the crew members from the heist. It is revealed Donnie masterminded the heist to keep all of the stolen cash for himself in a second garbage truck. After the passage of some time, Donnie is working in a London bar, planning a new heist.