I caught up with 2018's cops-and-robbers action movie "Den of Thieves" on a plane years after it came out, and had a great time with it. The film is trashy, sweaty, pulpy fun, full of macho swaggering and characters who couldn't possibly care less about morality. Along with things like "Plane" and the "Has Fallen" franchise, "Den of Thieves" was one of the projects that helped crown Gerard Butler the king of trash cinema.

Now the king is back in the amazingly named "Den of Thieves 2: Pantera," a sequel that picks up basically right after the first movie ends and shifts the action from the dirty back streets of Los Angeles to Europe. That title has nothing to do with the heavy metal band -- although it retains a little of that grungy, stringy-haired, wild-eyed energy that I think the band might approve of -- and instead refers to a real-life international jewel thief network known as the Panther mafia, or the Pink Panthers, that operates out of Eastern Europe. "Pantera" is the Spanish word for panther, and as you'll read in my conversation with writer/director Christian Gudegast, authenticity was very important to him when bringing this story to life.

If the first movie was a hangover come to life, this one is maybe more akin to chasing a wild night with a six pack of Red Bull. O'Shea Jackson Jr.'s character, Donnie, the secret mastermind behind the heist of the Federal Reserve in the first movie, is about to rob the World Diamond Center in France, and Gerard Butler's Big Nick tracks him down -- but not to arrest him. Nick's life is in such shambles back home that he flips and wants in on the heist himself. Personally, I still prefer the original movie because I think griminess works better with these characters than the comparatively slicker aesthetic here, and a lot of the dialogue in this sequel caused me to roll my eyes instead of pump my fist. But credit where it's due, I thought the climactic heist -- the whole reason to even care about these movies in the first place -- is fantastic. By the end, I was amped about the possibility of seeing more stories in this world, and Gudegast seems eager to return to it.

I caught up with the director back in early December to talk about expanding the scope of this franchise, altering the tone to produce something a little more fun than the first movie, his plans for a director's cut, and much more.