The Re-‘Den of Thieves’ LIVE With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Van Lathan

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Van Lathan didn’t appreciate the sold-out crowd in Los Angeles popping off like that after rewatching the 2018 heist film ‘Den of Thieves,’ starring Gerard Butler, O’Shea Jackson Jr., 50 Cent, and Pablo Schreiber. Watch this episode on our Ringer Movies YouTube channel! Producer: Craig Horlbeck Video Producer: Jack Sanders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Bill Simmons?

  What's up everybody, Chris Vernon here and welcome to a new season of the NBA and The Mismatch. And huge welcome as well to my new co-host, Dave Jacoby.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  I can't wait to link with you twice a week, every Tuesday and Friday, right here on The Mismatch to break down everything that's happening in the league.

• 0:18Bill Simmons?

  Who's playing well, who we loved, who we loathed, trade rumors, team dysfunction, we've got you covered right here. So follow us, subscribe and hit us with those five-star ratings on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  And also don't forget to follow us on social media, that's at Ringer NBA and check out the full mismatch episodes with the two handsomest podcasters in the history of podcasting right on the Ringer NBA YouTube channel.

• 0:45Bill Simmons?

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• 2:19Bill Simmons?

  The Rewatchables is brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network. You can find all the new episodes that we do on this feed on our Ringer Movies YouTube channel, has a lot of the old episodes as well, some fun clips, the big picture with Sean Fantastino made of Dobbins, and some of the extra movie stuff that we've been doing. You can subscribe and you'll get all of it by subscribing to Ringer Movies. You can subscribe to my YouTube channel as well, the Bill Simmons YouTube channel. Speaking of me, you can send us any suggestions, ideas, whatever you want for the Rewatchables, because I think we're gonna do a mailbag pretty soon. So I have a good batch of stuff already, but if you want to send anything else along

• 3:00Bill Simmons?

  the way, you can send it to [email protected]. What you're about to listen to, we taped a couple of weeks ago. We love the movie Den of Thieves. We'd already done on the Rewatchables a few years ago. We decided to do it again. We were trying to actually experiment with something in the LA Spotify office. We had a smaller crowd and we were just, we're just in the experimenting phase. I don't know what to tell you, but we decided to do Den of Thieves again. And it's me, and it's Van Lathan, and it's Chris Ryan. And the reason we did it is because Den of Thieves 2 is coming out on Friday and we were excited about it. So we were like, you know what? Screw it. Let's do Den of Thieves 1 again. So that's what we did. You're about to listen to it.

• 3:45Bill Simmons?

  Let's play the trailer for old times' sake.

• 4:14Chris Ryan?

  Den of Thieves, rated R.

• 4:25Chris Ryan?

  What's up?

• 4:27Speaker 04

  Yo, yo.

• 4:31Chris Ryan?

  We'll see how long I can keep the jacket on. It might get hot up here, but I want to rock it.

• 4:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that could get hot after a little bit.

• 4:35Chris Ryan?

  The official Den of Thieves Pantera jacket.

• 4:38Bill Simmons?

  It's unbelievable.

• 4:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:40Bill Simmons?

  CR was like a kid on Christmas when he saw that on the sofa. Uh, thank you to Lionsgate. Thank you to Den of Thieves, to Pantera, because that's why we very, we rarely do this where we've already done the rewatchables episode. And we say, fuck it, let's do it again. So we did this the first time, what was it, 2018, pre-COVID?

• 4:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:00Bill Simmons?

  And, you know, we didn't have a lot of the categories in. We didn't have Van, was it the ringering at? Van loves this movie. So we just said, screw it, let's run it back. Uh, this is a movie, the sequel, which we knew was coming.

• 5:14Chris Ryan?

  Yes. At the end of Den of Thieves 1, it's alluded to the idea that there is more to this story, and that it'll take place across the Atlantic.

• 5:21Bill Simmons?

  Van, you said something interesting when we were hanging around before. The slow burn movie that hits on cable or wherever. And it does a certain whatever in the theater. This movie did well in the theater, but then, you know, one of the reasons we have this podcast, it gets a second life of its own. This is gonna be one of those movies where the sequel does better than the original.

• 5:40Speaker 04

  Of course. The two reasons why I was interested in it, one is because they all went on The Breakfast Club. And I love it when white people go on The Breakfast Club.

• 5:50Speaker 04

  So I see this list of people on The Breakfast Club, and it's like 50 Cent, Pablo Schreiber?

• 5:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 5:58Speaker 04

  And Gerard Butler. I want to know who Gerard Butler think won the Jay-Z versus Nas beef?

• 6:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 6:06Speaker 04

  And so that's, okay, this movie's interesting. And then, to a man, every single person that had seen the movie was like, yo, man, you gotta see Den of Thieves. Like, Den of Thieves is actually crazy. And I watched it, and I'm like, I'm vibing with these characters, man. This is my type of joint.

• 6:24Bill Simmons?

  CR, you're the reason I saw this movie.

• 6:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:26Bill Simmons?

  We're like, we've known each other a long time, since 2011. I'd say seven, eight times in my life with you, you just sent me a text to be like, Bill.

• 6:37Chris Ryan?

  I think what happens is I'll send you the text, I'll be like, "Have you seen Den of Thieves?" I'm gonna get around to it. Then if I see you in person, I pull you aside, I put my hand on your shoulder and I say, "Hey, have you seen Den of Thieves?" And you're like, "I'm gonna do it this weekend." And then 10 days later, I get a text that says, "Huh, Den of Thieves. On watch number three in 10 days."

• 6:55Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 6:57Chris Ryan?

  And the thing about this movie is it essentially has these three chunks, right? It's got everything up until Merriman is like, "We're cop killers now." And you're like, "Holy shit." And then it's got the middle part where you're like, "This is amazing, I want this to go on for five hours."

• 7:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 7:12Chris Ryan?

  And then it has the last hour and six minutes, which is just hard as anything else, and has three robberies, or three shootouts essentially. And you can watch any given part in any order, and you can just, as soon as one's on, you're just like, "I'm in, I'm watching the whole thing."

• 7:26Speaker 04

  And the movie legitimately keeps you off balance.

• 7:30Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 7:31Speaker 04

  Like, there are three or four different times, like, when I was first watching the movie, I'm like, "Oh shit." Like, what's about to happen? When they pass each other, when he's at the house with the girl? I thought it was gonna go down right there. Then, the same question that he asked him when he's, when they're in the bank, he goes, "How you gonna get out of this one?" That's what the fuck I was thinking.

• 7:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 7:53Speaker 04

  I was like, "There's no way to get out of this situation, like, he's cooked." But the movie keeps you off balance and keep you off the balance until the payoff is just immense at the end.

• 8:01Bill Simmons?

  Well, it starts out, we get the, we get the card at the top.

• 8:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:07Bill Simmons?

  2,400 times a year, 44 times a week, nine times a day, every 48 minutes, it's just flashing up. "A bank is robbed here." And then it goes away, and then it comes back.

• 8:18Chris Ryan?

  That's like the text equivalent-

• 8:19Bill Simmons?

  "This is the bank robbery capital of the world." I'm like, "All right, I'm in."

• 8:22Chris Ryan?

  That's the text equivalent of when, like, when Billy Bob Thornton is talking about fossil fuels on Land Managers, like, "Absolutely, I believe it." And this is the same thing for the text. The text, you're just like, "All right, I guess I don't witness bank robberies every 44 minutes."

• 8:36Speaker 04

  I'm about to say, "When did it happen?" It happened all over the place, I ain't seen one yet.

• 8:41Bill Simmons?

  48 minutes, every 48 minutes feels-

• 8:44Speaker 04

  It's a lot!

• 8:45Bill Simmons?

  Feels like a lot.

• 8:47Chris Ryan?

  That would be like, every time you go to the bank, there's a 1 in 8 chance-

• 8:51Speaker 04

  You're just gonna get robbed! I think about that, I'm like, yo, man, online forever. I don't wanna be in the middle of it.

• 8:57Bill Simmons?

  It'd be funny if that was completely made up. And they were just like, I wonder if they'll believe this.

• 9:02Speaker 04

  But it's kinda thing that they put it in front of a movie and then like you repeat it without verifying it.

• 9:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:08Speaker 04

  You have a party somewhere, be like, I bet you didn't notice, every forty-eight minutes in Los Angeles, a bank is robbed.

• 9:15Bill Simmons?

  So, CR, do your thing about a crime movie versus a heist movie.

• 9:18Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah. Well, this is like, I talked about this on the first one, but there was like this idea that a crime movie is essentially about the culture around crime. So, in some ways, I think like Heat is actually like a really good crime film because it's not just about these guys pulling a bank job. It's about why they're pulling a bank job. It's all the circumstances that led them to this moment where they're pulling it. Ocean's Eleven is a heist movie because it's about the mechanics of pulling off a heist. It's about all the little layers of how they're gonna get into the casino. And Dead of Thieves is both. It's about the culture of what led these guys to these moment and LA and the LA crime scene, but then it's also about

• 9:57Chris Ryan?

  this super elaborate breaking into one bank to tunnel into another bank to sneak out with Chinese food and get thirty million dollars in shredded money.

• 10:07Speaker 04

  It's also a movie to me that like examines a culture that I wasn't familiar with yet. Now, we ended up getting a whole bunch of information on cliques and organizations inside of the LA Sheriff's Department. But at that point, I didn't really know much about it. And to see those guys on screen like that, it was almost like Alonzo's people

• 10:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:29Speaker 04

  from Training Day, but if they had a little bit more of an actual code and aim to stop crime. So, the ambiguity of what in this movie is actually criminal, it muddles who you want to win. And that, as much as anything else in the plot, keeps you off balance throughout the whole movie, too.

• 10:48Chris Ryan?

  For sure.

• 10:49Bill Simmons?

  Well, you mentioned Heat. So, the biggest, the biggest criticism of this movie with the douchey people who reviewed it, they know who they are, they're in the wrong, was that it was a Heat ripoff. We prefer to think of it, it's the Sons of Heat, right? Triple Frontier, this movie. What are, what are the other Sons of Heat? Cause Heat comes out in 1995 and there's a bunch of movies that are clearly influenced in different ways.

• 11:16Chris Ryan?

  I mean, Heat's influenced pretty much every movie that's come from it. I mean, like, every movie that came afterwards. I mean, like, you could go as big as Dark Knight, or you could say something like Triple Nine, or like, there's just tons of crime movies that have come out that have referenced it. I think that the thing that this movie really grabbed onto was the idea that Heat has, but this movie takes to another level too, is just this like, the robber and the cop being on these paths that are like, gonna collide at some point.

• 11:41Speaker 04

  That they're essentially the same person. That their obsession with whatever it is that they're doing clouds their judgment and infiltrates every single part of their life.

• 11:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and in some ways, like, I mean, Merriman is more principled than Big Nick in this movie, so they have the like, kind of like, who are you watching, who are you rooting for, I think fades and changes throughout the film. But then they twist everything with this usual suspects plot with Donnie, right? So, that's the thing that I think is the curve ball that keeps you off balance throughout the movie, is this like, why is, we keep going back to the driver, we keep going back to Donnie, I know it's an important actor and everything, but like, what's happening here? And it's only until The Last Shot Kaiser Soze style that...

• 12:20Speaker 04

  And something else about Heat that's a little different here is that, um, obviously in Heat you have Shaherlis who is like, all problems, right? He's like, going through whatever, but Neil and the Pacino character are pretty invincible? They, I mean, they go through things, right? But they're pretty one dimensional in terms of...

• 12:42Chris Ryan?

  They're samurais, they're like, this is what I do.

• 12:44Speaker 04

  Right, these characters are not. Like, guy in the middle of divorce, talking to his daughter through a fence, he's crying. You have, uh, O'Shea Jackson's character, and you took it off already, brother.

• 12:58Chris Ryan?

  It gets hot up here.

• 12:59Bill Simmons?

  I knew that was gonna happen.

• 13:02Speaker 04

  But anyways, but most of these characters, they have different dimensions to them where you see a little weakness and vulnerability from them.

• 13:10Bill Simmons?

  Sons of Heat, we left that to town.

• 13:12Chris Ryan?

  The town, yeah.

• 13:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that was another one. So I had crime movie versus heist movie. A bank robbery movie for bank robbery fans?

• 13:20Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 13:22Bill Simmons?

  Right, there's some touches.

• 13:23Chris Ryan?

  You really have to love it. It's like watching non-majors golf. You know, it's like, I just really, really like watching Max.

• 13:30Bill Simmons?

  The culture, yeah, the culture of Robin Banks. And then, just a lot of alpha male stare downs. Yeah. You mentioned one of them before, but this movie, you could have maybe done two stare downs, and they have like four or five.

• 13:43Speaker 04

  The entire film is like one gigantic dick measuring contest.

• 13:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 13:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:47Bill Simmons?

  You have Benihana, you have the gun range, you have in the uh...

• 13:53Chris Ryan?

  Prom date.

• 13:54Bill Simmons?

  Prom, well. And then you have the day after when Pablo Schreiber's character comes on.

• 14:00Speaker 04

  You have literally the lowest form of dick measuring, which is, "My high school used to fuck over your high school." Which is something that we do in Louisiana all the time. "Holy shit, you went to Capital?" "Tell y'all motherfucking asses up." I'm 44, you know what I'm saying?

• 14:15Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 14:17Speaker 04

  It was 1996, but it still happens.

• 14:20Bill Simmons?

  Would you be able to recognize people from a high school you played?

• 14:23Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 14:23Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 14:24Bill Simmons?

  22 years later, okay.

• 14:25Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 14:26Bill Simmons?

  Just wanted to make sure.

• 14:26Speaker 04

  I still know they names.

• 14:29Bill Simmons?

  All right, so after watching this movie a bunch of times, and we did it, the first time we did the pod, the movie had been out probably like a year and a half.

• 14:36Chris Ryan?

  I think so.

• 14:37Bill Simmons?

  I've seen it at least 10 times since.

• 14:41Bill Simmons?

  This movie checks a lot of boxes for the kind of thing we love, including when people say things like, "What happened back there?"

• 14:50Bill Simmons?

  We're cop killers now.

• 14:54Bill Simmons?

  The flashback of the parole prisoner leaving.

• 14:56Chris Ryan?

  He says it so much cooler than that.

• 14:59Bill Simmons?

  I'm just ripping through it.

• 15:01Chris Ryan?

  You sound like Mr. Robot for a second.

• 15:03Bill Simmons?

  Do your version.

• 15:05Chris Ryan?

  He's like, "We're cop killers now." Like, he says he's got swag, bro.

• 15:08Bill Simmons?

  Van, you wanna go?

• 15:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, sure. We're cop killers now.

• 15:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that was best. Alright, Van wins.

• 15:18Chris Ryan?

  We're cop killers now. That's good. That's good. You just needed more than one take.

• 15:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's okay. That's, um, two takes. We have one of my favorites when a parole prisoner leaves and the prison guard has to give the, "See you soon, Ray." Such a dick move. The guy's running out of jail.

• 15:36Speaker 04

  See, this is my problem with the prison system. Why you talking to him like that?

• 15:39Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 15:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:40Speaker 04

  He just got out.

• 15:41Bill Simmons?

  It's the happiest day of his life.

• 15:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, like you.

• 15:43Bill Simmons?

  You give him shit?

• 15:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, can't wait till you get back. Then let him go. The girl's there.

• 15:48Bill Simmons?

  We have a cop saying, "Yeah, I guess I'm getting divorced."

• 15:55Speaker 04

  Join the club.

• 15:56Bill Simmons?

  We have, we have the, uh, the bank that's never been robbed.

• 16:01Chris Ryan?

  Oh, my God, and that's why we're gonna rob it.

• 16:03Bill Simmons?

  A fucking staple.

• 16:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:04Speaker 04

  But one of my favorite things about a heist movie is talking about just how impregnable a place is that's about to get robbed.

• 16:12Bill Simmons?

  And yet somehow there's a ton of information about the place and ventilation.

• 16:17Bill Simmons?

  The, the guy on the phone talking to the cops, "You just killed a hostage." Boom. Love that. And then, um, I like when there's like intricate detail about shooting. Where, like in this one, he's like suspects wearing body armor. Limb and headshots only.

• 16:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:34Bill Simmons?

  It's like, that's some fucking deep dive shit. Limb and headshots only.

• 16:38Speaker 04

  That means shoot them either in the head or in the arm.

• 16:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:42Chris Ryan?

  That's the Alameda corridor, man. You just gotta come, you know, come ready to rock.

• 16:48Bill Simmons?

  Playing it off. So Gerard Butler, who I knew from 300, I knew from Law Abiding Citizen. I knew from a movie my family loves called Chasing Mavericks.

• 16:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. Oh, yeah, my surf movie, big surf movie.

• 17:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that was a big movie in the Simmons house.

• 17:02Speaker 04

  You're not an Olympus's fallen guy?

• 17:04Bill Simmons?

  Well, he did the two fallen movies.

• 17:06Chris Ryan?

  He's also really good in Rock and Roll, I think, is that the...

• 17:08Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's great.

• 17:09Chris Ryan?

  That one's awesome.

• 17:10Bill Simmons?

  But there was like some rom com stuff with him and he was like, is he gonna be Nick Cage? Is he, is he going the Ryan Reynolds path? What is this? And then he finds himself in Big Nick Chris.

• 17:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Sometimes you gotta age into the roles that you want. I think this is a case where it's like, he was a beefcake, he was a rom com star. He did some like crime movies or whatever, but Big Nick and all the movies around this time seems to be, this is where he was always headed. And this look, being able to wear that weight, wear that age, the bags under his eyes. I don't think he could have done that 10 years prior.

• 17:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, those guys, a lot of times you come out and they fill around with it. Even Matthew McConaughey had like an awkward period where he was trying to figure out who he was in Hollywood. But when Gerard figured it out.

• 17:54Bill Simmons?

  Who is he?

• 17:55Speaker 04

  Who is Matthew McConaughey?

• 17:56Bill Simmons?

  Did he figure it out?

• 17:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. All right, all right, all right. He's the cool guy from Texas.

• 18:00Bill Simmons?

  Well, Butler gained 25 pounds for this movie.

• 18:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 18:03Bill Simmons?

  And, you know, sometimes you're here with method actors, maybe, maybe off the screen, they're trying to capture what's in there with the character. You just get the feeling Butler might have been getting after it a tiny bit.

• 18:13Chris Ryan?

  Well, I just think it's perfect for Big Nick, though. Big Nick doesn't sleep.

• 18:18Bill Simmons?

  No combat fan?

• 18:20Speaker 04

  I mean, he's leathery. He's grizzled. Like, it works.

• 18:23Bill Simmons?

  He's sweaty?

• 18:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, he looks like a guy that, you know, if you're in a situation with him, you think twice about it before you fuck with him. And that's the kind of thing that you have to give off to make this role really work.

• 18:33Chris Ryan?

  He looks like a guy from the 1970s. Like, they stopped making dudes looking like that in 1986.

• 18:40Bill Simmons?

  He looks like a guy who got home at 6:00 in the morning, accidentally texted his wife instead of a stripper, and then drank from milk in the fridge.

• 18:48Speaker 04

  Boy, I'll tell you what.

• 18:49Bill Simmons?

  Without putting it in a glass, just...

• 18:50Speaker 04

  So, like, in one scene, one thing that is decidedly white, and then another thing that is decidedly black.

• 18:59Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's a good rewatchables category.

• 19:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 19:01Speaker 04

  Right. Careful.

• 19:03Chris Ryan?

  But only for five minutes.

• 19:06Speaker 04

  Like every time I see, and they, make sure they only have white characters do this in movies. Every time I see somebody go to a refrigerator and drink whole milk out of the gallon early in the morning, I'm like, god damn, that's Caucasian. But see, the, the, the, the, the other part of it?

• 19:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 19:24Speaker 04

  Where you text your girl, but you really meant to text the stripper? My homie's been through that.

• 19:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 19:33Speaker 04

  Like, we, like, we, I've been there.

• 19:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 19:36Speaker 04

  Dude, what should I say? What you mean?

• 19:38Chris Ryan?

  We need to find the guy who's done both and make him president.

• 19:41Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 19:43Bill Simmons?

  So, so when we did this in 2019, we talked about how this would have been the perfect Nick Cage role in like the mid, late 2000s, and then Nick Cage changed out of it. And now it's six years, like, who's the actor now that would be the Big Nick O'Brien?

• 20:00Chris Ryan?

  I think that, like, Pedro Pascal, maybe, Wagner Mora, maybe. You're looking at me like, cause you're just like, there's only one Big Nick.

• 20:08Bill Simmons?

  No, you didn't, I don't know if we hit it. I, I really think it's a hard, you have to have some experience with the actor. They have to look a little physically different. They have to look like this might be happening to them as they're filming the movie. It's a hard needle to thread, like Affleck, I think, could have done it in the mid 2000s, late 2000s.

• 20:26Speaker 04

  Affleck, Affleck, Boston, Boston.

• 20:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:31Bill Simmons?

  Who else?

• 20:33Speaker 04

  Um, you know what? It's, it's weird. There's a version of this in the multiverse where Liam Schreiber plays Big Nick.

• 20:42Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 20:42Speaker 04

  Cause he could play.

• 20:43Bill Simmons?

  That guy had grown from the crap.

• 20:45Speaker 04

  And then, well, think about how.

• 20:46Chris Ryan?

  But it would be brother versus brother.

• 20:48Speaker 04

  Brother versus brother. One went to Long Beach Poly, one South Torrance.

• 20:52Bill Simmons?

  Pablo Schreiber, half brother of the, six foot five. I would say he's about as tall as you can get as an actor and be the lead in a movie when everyone else is so short in Hollywood. You can't really go higher than six, five.

• 21:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:04Bill Simmons?

  Right? Like he couldn't if he was six, seven.

• 21:06Chris Ryan?

  He looks like he could play for the Chargers.

• 21:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he's huge. He looks like a tight end. Um, we knew him as Sabaka on The Wire.

• 21:13Speaker 04

  Sabaka, yeah.

• 21:14Bill Simmons?

  Way, way, way back and he was so good in season two. And then, you know, just was in a bunch of good stuff.

• 21:22Chris Ryan?

  Orange is the New Black, yeah.

• 21:24Bill Simmons?

  I think this is my favorite performance of his.

• 21:26Chris Ryan?

  It's transformative. It's awesome. He's incredible in this.

• 21:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, like.

• 21:30Bill Simmons?

  Ray Merriman.

• 21:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, just kind of has a lot of what you need for a role. Like this intensity, but at the same time, you have to believe that there's some sort of code. And it comes across really well when he's on screen. There are certain things that he doesn't want to and won't do.

• 21:45Bill Simmons?

  Is Ray Merriman a fun hang? Probably not. It's like, come on over to the barbecue at Ray's house. It's like, not a lot of laughs at Ray's house.

• 21:53Chris Ryan?

  Ray is.

• 21:53Bill Simmons?

  Just people grimly eating.

• 21:55Chris Ryan?

  Eating steak unadorned on a paper plate.

• 21:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 21:59Chris Ryan?

  By himself.

• 22:00Speaker 04

  See, I think.

• 22:01Bill Simmons?

  Like he's not gonna have a lot of thoughts on the 12-team college playoff.

• 22:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. He's like, you guys, I don't know, how does Boise State get it by? I don't get it.

• 22:08Speaker 04

  So I think that he's probably, this is the thing about this little group. I think that they're probably fun within themselves, but not fun for anybody else. They probably have a lot of fun talking about getting to the X field in Baghdad circa 2006, but that's not some shit I want to hear about.

• 22:25Bill Simmons?

  Right, right.

• 22:25Chris Ryan?

  Honestly, Van, I'd rarely do this with you, but disagree. It, all scenes that we see with these guys, they're like, do you want to lift? Like, let's lift. That's all they do. They don't like, they're not talking.

• 22:35Speaker 04

  Okay, but there's one, I get it. There's one scene that makes me feel different. When they're intimidating.

• 22:42Bill Simmons?

  The prom date.

• 22:42Speaker 04

  The, the, the prom date. And then after they intimidate the prom date, they go back in here and I'm like, yo, these guys not about to have a laugh about this? They were serious? But then they all break down.

• 22:52Chris Ryan?

  But the one time that these guys crack up is when they're threatening to put a teenager in a wheelchair.

• 22:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:57Chris Ryan?

  All other times, we ruin at Benihana before Nick gets there. They're just like.

• 23:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 23:04Chris Ryan?

  They are hard as fucking nails. Like they don't like, like there's no laughter. There's only robbery.

• 23:14Bill Simmons?

  I got family here, bro.

• 23:16Chris Ryan?

  Don't appreciate you popping off like this, bro.

• 23:20Bill Simmons?

  Thirty million dollar budget, made eighty-five billion dollars. And the key to this movie was, it did well. And then it hit this whole cable world, really in the last kind of vestiges of when that would happen. Because now it's just like, it's all streamers, you're deciding, you know, what do I want to watch? Oh, I'll go to Netflix. Oh, I like that thumbnail, I'll click on that. This was still the era of, you just went to a cable guide and looked around and saw it was on. And Den of Thieves was on.

• 23:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 23:49Bill Simmons?

  I would say for nine months straight on Showtime. There's like three Showtime channels, it was just on one of the three constantly. And that was where I think the secret sauce came in with the movie.

• 23:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, I think that, how many films do we, could you name in like the last three years that did something like this? You know what I mean? Like since COVID, I think it's been like a real like drought, where we're not really seeing films that are getting like a second life, a second legs. And people have talked about this, where it's like the home DVD market, everything about it has kind of killed the idea of films having a second life. But this film did well in the box office, and then I think it just became huge.

• 24:25Speaker 04

  Another thing is, there's just so many movies. Like you're going through your Prime Video or whatever, and you see a movie and it's like, oh my god, most deaf John Lithgow, Anthony Hopkins. And you're like, should I watch this? And then, you know what I mean? But this one, you literally got a vote of confidence from so many different people. Like my cousin hit me up, and I know that he's excited about a movie where he puts that in front of the name of the movie. So he'll be like, oh man, did you see that Den of Thieves?

• 24:54Speaker 04

  But the that lets me know, he fucking loved that shit.

• 24:58Chris Ryan?

  Man, did you see that conclave?

• 25:04Chris Ryan?

  You see that brutalist?

• 25:07Speaker 04

  That's how it is.

• 25:08Chris Ryan?

  That's the brutalist?

• 25:09Speaker 04

  And so I watch it, and I'm like, yeah, man, I seen that Den of Thieves, that Den of Thieves crazy.

• 25:16Bill Simmons?

  No Roger Ebert for this. Every rewatchable's episode, we'd read a Roger Ebert review, but he was, uh, long gone, because he died in 2014.

• 25:24Chris Ryan?

  But?

• 25:25Bill Simmons?

  I did ask ChatGPT Roger Ebert. Oh my god. Had to find out. And they said he thought, that ChatGPT thought he would like it. Den of Thieves is And praised for its gritty action intense high sequences. Some critics find it derivative of earlier crime films like Heat. Again, they can all fuck themselves.

• 25:44Chris Ryan?

  Did Roger Ebert write that?

• 25:46Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 25:47Chris Ryan?

  Roger Ebert wrote this?

• 25:48Bill Simmons?

  Based on this, Ebert might have given it two and a half to three stars. Acknowledging its entertainment value while pointing out its lack of originality or depth. Chat GPT, settle down.

• 25:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:59Bill Simmons?

  I think he would have gone three stars. I think he would have liked the action stuff.

• 26:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I.

• 26:04Bill Simmons?

  But I think, yeah, he probably would have brought up other high stuff.

• 26:07Chris Ryan?

  I think he also would have seen that there was like, it hearkened back to like French Connection. It hearkens back to.

• 26:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 26:12Chris Ryan?

  Classic cop movies from the.

• 26:13Bill Simmons?

  It's the kind of movie that should be made every three, four years.

• 26:16Speaker 04

  And I also think he would have enjoyed the fact that even though the movie is familiar in ways, it doesn't play it safe as far as its story.

• 26:24Bill Simmons?

  Yep.

• 26:24Speaker 04

  It goes for some new things that maybe some of those other movies did story wise.

• 26:33Bill Simmons?

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• 27:18Bill Simmons?

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• 27:43Bill Simmons?

  Most rewatchable. First one, uh, donut store robbery.

• 27:46Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 27:47Bill Simmons?

  So we get eerie LA, which, um, LA, I don't, I don't know if other cities operate in the same way, but there, there's this whole other world of LA. At night, middle of the night, two, three in the morning, where you just kinda don't know what the fuck's going on. And written a bunch of different parts, right? And it's just like empty highways. It's always so weird not to see cars. And there's just a couple of stores open all over the place and you just.

• 28:14Chris Ryan?

  Can I make a suggestion?

• 28:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 28:16Chris Ryan?

  You're, you have a very popular genre of social media video called your walk and talks. What, when are we?

• 28:22Bill Simmons?

  3am Hawthorne.

• 28:23Speaker 04

  I wanna see 3am Bill.

• 28:24Chris Ryan?

  3am Donut Run. Bill walking down Wilshire.

• 28:28Speaker 04

  Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Not Wilshire.

• 28:33Speaker 04

  Fuck Wilshire. Gardena. Southgate. Hawthorne. I wanna see you out there with the people doing the walk and talk.

• 28:42Bill Simmons?

  But you see a movie like this that gives you the, the card of there's a bank robber every 48 minutes. And then the next scene, it's the middle of the night with an empty, long, four lane street. And there's a donut shop and you're like, this isn't gonna go well for the.

• 28:57Chris Ryan?

  And then it's like, is that Bill Simmons walking by the donut shop talking about the case?

• 29:01Bill Simmons?

  I think he's talking about Drake Bay.

• 29:04Bill Simmons?

  So we get the classic, the guy who's reaching for the coffee, who they have to shoot.

• 29:09Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 29:10Bill Simmons?

  We're out of time. We gotta engage. They know exactly how long.

• 29:15Bill Simmons?

  Out of fucking time. We gotta engage. Contact right! Range 100, suppressive fire!

• 29:29Bill Simmons?

  Who, which guy would you be in the crew van?

• 29:31Speaker 04

  I mean.

• 29:32Bill Simmons?

  Would you be the guy monitoring when the, like, we have 90 seconds, 60 seconds? Would you be the lead guy?

• 29:36Speaker 04

  Now that's the best job.

• 29:37Bill Simmons?

  Backup guy?

• 29:38Speaker 04

  Right. The guy in the chair is the best job, but I'm probably Bosco. You know, I probably messed the whole thing up.

• 29:45Bill Simmons?

  He was reaching for the coffee.

• 29:46Speaker 04

  He was, he was reaching for it. Pop, pop, pop. That's probably me.

• 29:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 29:49Speaker 04

  We don't know what we could do with this Lathan guy. Maybe we have to kill him. But that's probably me. But I will say something about that scene is whenever a movie opens with a heist, you're always trying to figure out what that robbery means. Like what it actually says about the movie and about the crew and about their ethos. And of all the heists that you've seen to open something, this one says the most about the crew itself to me.

• 30:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:14Speaker 04

  Because they end up, uh.

• 30:16Chris Ryan?

  But they've had military training.

• 30:18Speaker 04

  They've had military training, contact left, contact right. You, you have all of that stuff. Two, they rob, they basically steal the truck and not the contents of the truck. So you know there's something more to it. And then three, the sentence, we're cop killers now, tells you that there's something more to them. So you probably learned the most about this group because of that.

• 30:38Chris Ryan?

  And that this was like a, a level up for them.

• 30:41Speaker 04

  Right.

• 30:41Bill Simmons?

  Nice sort of swerve though, because we don't know what's in the truck. He opens the door. I mean, we know after we watch the movie.

• 30:48Chris Ryan?

  That's the first hint that this is going to be a very twisty movie.

• 30:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 30:51Chris Ryan?

  He's looking in the truck like that.

• 30:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's interesting because there's shades of the opening and heat. But it's also later parts of different heist movies too. There's, it, it's tapping into a bunch. So next one. Big Nick shows up at the crime scene. And, uh, Gerard Butler's just like, uh, guys, in case you were wondering, I'm going for it.

• 31:14Bill Simmons?

  I'm going for it for the first minute. You see me. Is there, is there a half a box of donuts on the floor with like splattered blood on the box? I'll have one. I'm hungry. Looks great.

• 31:25Chris Ryan?

  Is there an FBI agent I can call Lob and Bob's?

• 31:29Bill Simmons?

  They give him the, hey, rough night? He's like, yes, next subject. And you just know. Hasn't slept. There's no way he has been asleep that night. He eats the donut, man.

• 31:39Speaker 04

  By the way, as far as, because you know, there's always like a grizzled cop rock bottom thing.

• 31:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 31:45Speaker 04

  It's either a cop takes out, you know, a cup, a mug, pours some whiskey in it, does some Pento Bismol, and you think, damn, that motherfucker nasty, right? There's, but as far as rock bottom cop stuff goes, eating a donut from a crime scene after someone has said, that one doesn't have any blood on it, broke new ground and you are a nasty motherfucker. You need God.

• 32:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, your, your defense is, well, the box was closed. That's it. That's your only defense.

• 32:22Speaker 04

  The dude says, he's like, we got donuts down there. He's like, here's a couple of them down there with no blood on them. It's just, that was one of them. Oh yeah, Big Nick got some problems.

• 32:30Bill Simmons?

  I also love when, you know, when these guys come in and they instantly know everything that can happen. Where he's saying like, well, they knew the route. There's no getaway bird support. And he's just like spelling it out. It's like, this guy has slept probably one hour in the last three days. And it's just ate a donut off the floor, but somehow he's like just reaching left and right, grabbing everything.

• 32:50Chris Ryan?

  Same game parlays. You're just like.

• 32:53Bill Simmons?

  Cavs at home.

• 32:54Speaker 04

  But, but, but to be honest with you, the script is answering the questions because if you're from LA, when you see that first scene, you're thinking, where is the helicopter? Like, why is there no chopper in the air? There should have been a chopper in the air and they answer it right away.

• 33:11Bill Simmons?

  Then he gives us the, we're dealing with a different animal, boys. Like, oh yeah, I guess we are. I wrote down, hungover Nick goes right from a donut to a cigarette while making fun of a cop in a suit for being a vegan.

• 33:26Bill Simmons?

  Just elite stuff.

• 33:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:28Bill Simmons?

  It's great. It's it's some of Butler's finest work. All right, next scene. Donnie tells the story of how he met Merriman and the crew. Really fun driving scene. Good flashback stuff. One of the things I like about this movie is you always know where you are in the movie, even if we're going backwards, you always have a sense of what's happening.

• 33:47Bill Simmons?

  So then they have the Merriman setting up the Bank of Banks versus Big Nick breaking down Merriman's crew, where they do a little back and forth.

• 33:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:56Bill Simmons?

  Which I think works really well. And Merriman somehow has an incredible amount of information about the Bank of Banks.

• 34:02Chris Ryan?

  Well, we find out why later.

• 34:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, later on, we know.

• 34:05Bill Simmons?

  How does he know there were 53 attempts?

• 34:07Chris Ryan?

  Oh, well, that might be on Wikipedia. I have no idea. But like, I mean.

• 34:10Bill Simmons?

  Is that on Wikipedia though?

• 34:12Chris Ryan?

  I think Donnie is, I think the idea is that Donnie has, Donnie is actually the the fountain of information. Like, he's the one who's like, here are all the bar napkins. Here's all the information.

• 34:21Bill Simmons?

  So it's not bank robbery, bank robbery reference dot com?

• 34:24Chris Ryan?

  Bank robbery Reddit? Yeah, I don't know.

• 34:26Bill Simmons?

  Fifty three, whatever. But we, then we find out Laveau and Merriman played football at Long Beach Poly. There's 30 million dollars. Do you buy this thing that there's 30 million dollars that could just disappear because they have to shred it so nobody's looking for it? I bought it personally.

• 34:43Speaker 04

  I mean, I bought it too. There's always something like that in every movie. Like, we're gonna steal plates to make more money. These plates are the only four plates in the whole world, and we're the only ones that can get them. I just go, okay, cool. Well, go get the plates.

• 34:54Chris Ryan?

  It's an incredibly high degree of difficulty. Like, they, these guys are so heavy hitters. Like, they could just straight up rob a bank. You know, like, they're like, we need to rob this specific cash before it goes into a shredder.

• 35:07Speaker 04

  Well, then they can, I guess, spend it for the rest of their lives, and it's untraceable.

• 35:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:12Speaker 04

  I guess it's worth it. But I don't know.

• 35:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Well, Heat has, they're stealing what's-his-face's bonds and selling it back to him.

• 35:20Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 35:21Bill Simmons?

  What was that guy's name?

• 35:22Chris Ryan?

  Uh.

• 35:22Bill Simmons?

  Van Zant.

• 35:23Chris Ryan?

  Van Zant.

• 35:24Speaker 04

  Van Zant, yeah.

• 35:25Bill Simmons?

  Fast Five had, they're breaking into the bank in Brazil.

• 35:28Speaker 04

  Man.

• 35:28Bill Simmons?

  That nobody's ever broken into. I think Fast Five's a secret heist movie.

• 35:32Speaker 04

  The fast people doing too much. They breaking into all different types of shit. They breaking into igloos, going to outer space. All, it, it, it's like, whatever is the hardest shit to do, they trying to do it. I'm, I'm, I'm over it. I want them to do some regular shit. I want on the rap, a 7-Eleven in the next Fast Move. Some regular shit.

• 35:51Bill Simmons?

  But going back, back to the basics.

• 35:52Speaker 04

  Go back to basics.

• 35:53Bill Simmons?

  Fast 11, back to the basics.

• 35:55Speaker 04

  Fast 11, back to basics.

• 35:56Bill Simmons?

  Taking down a doughnut shop.

• 35:57Speaker 04

  Dom Toretto on a Schwinn.

• 35:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 36:00Speaker 04

  Robbing a regular 7-Eleven, because he's going too far now.

• 36:03Bill Simmons?

  It's a private school charity banquet. He's just taking it down. Next scene, 50 Cent's pep talk for his daughter's prom date.

• 36:11Chris Ryan?

  One of the best scenes of American history.

• 36:12Bill Simmons?

  Finally, they put a chef's outfit on him, let him cook for three, four minutes. So this was up. For the past 16 years, my daughter's safety and protection has been my responsibility, my responsibility only. And for the first time in her life, I see, I gotta hand you that responsibility. Don't fuck up. Or your momma will weep if she has to will your ass around every day the rest of your life. Now, I, I worked on this because I want to say this to you as nice as possible. You understand? Yeah. Y- yes, sir. To see you, hi, you, I want to me. Eh? What am I to heal my eye? Okay. Eh? It's alright, it's alright. Listen, listen.

• 36:57Bill Simmons?

  All he's trying to say is, is, is wonderful to meet you. And he wants you to have a beautiful evening. I'll see you at 11:30. Yeah, yeah. Well, 11:30, yeah. 11:30, good choice. I did the same thing to my daughter on his prom date. I had all the guys from The Ringer in the garage. Just trying to, shot fantasy, trying to intimidate him.

• 37:22Speaker 04

  I thought you had really did that. It would just be funny, the phone call that he would make to his boys. Like, this dude act like he was about to push up on me. I'll fuck this guy up.

• 37:30Chris Ryan?

  He had a bunch of nerds talking about the Letterboxd accounts. I don't know if you know me, I got a lot of followers on Letterboxd. I saw the brutalist.

• 37:42Bill Simmons?

  I'll go on Blue Sky and I'll ruin you.

• 37:44Chris Ryan?

  In 70 millimeter, yeah.

• 37:46Bill Simmons?

  Next scene, my favorite scene in the movie, the Benihana scene. So what you doing here, eh? Work around here? Enjoying my dinner, man. Really? Yeah. Food here suck.

• 38:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Yeah, we come here for the ass.

• 38:07Bill Simmons?

  How many times have you watched this here? Do you go on YouTube and just watch, just type in Denny's Benihana like once a month?

• 38:12Chris Ryan?

  Last night, my wife and I were chatting about where we could get like a last dinner before she takes off for the holidays. And I was, I did Google directions for Benihana in Torrance. It was not a convenient drive, but I think about this a lot. And I don't know why we haven't done a group dinner at Benihana yet.

• 38:32Bill Simmons?

  Maybe we should.

• 38:33Speaker 04

  Maybe we should, but we need to do it when there's somebody there we can like intimidate.

• 38:38Chris Ryan?

  Is this officially Benihana? Did they?

• 38:40Speaker 04

  I don't think they ever say Benihana in there though.

• 38:43Chris Ryan?

  And are there Benihana ripoff restaurants or is it like?

• 38:45Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Like other type of hibachi joints and stuff like that for sure.

• 38:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the food here sucks. We come here for the ass.

• 38:54Chris Ryan?

  Imagine you're like talking shit, like what the fuck?

• 38:57Speaker 04

  Some guy over there.

• 38:59Chris Ryan?

  I'm making an onion volcano, yeah.

• 39:03Bill Simmons?

  The staff's like, we're right here, guys. Starts talking all kinds of high school football shit.

• 39:08Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 39:09Bill Simmons?

  Number 55, right? That's how I remember it. Wore the same number, 55, right? I went to South Torrance. Yeah, we played you guys a couple of times. Yeah, you and all those fat ass Samoans. They were big, but man, lazy motherfuckers, probably all that spam.

• 39:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we fucking crushed you guys. Crushed you guys when I was there, crushed you guys when you were there. Still crushing you guys.

• 39:39Bill Simmons?

  Got family here, bro. Don't really appreciate you popping off. All right, I'll wait there. You got all aggro, was I being rude? Hey, was I being rude? Huh?

• 39:52Bill Simmons?

  Is that an intermediate fight, Van?

• 39:54Speaker 04

  I mean, yeah, our rivals were capital. And you don't just bring up different shit that happened. But what I want to know is what position these guys played? I want to know if they was on the field together because they taking this shit real seriously. They see the dude, and the dude is the sheriff, and he goes, yeah, he played for South Torrance. It's like, you write this like, fuck them. I'm like, goddamn, y'all taking it that fucking serious after years and years and years and years?

• 40:18Bill Simmons?

  So what do you think? I was gonna do this later, but what were the, what do you think, Ray Merriman's with middle linebacker, tight end?

• 40:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, free safety linebacker.

• 40:25Bill Simmons?

  Well, I think he was definitely, he's too tall. He had to be defensive end, middle linebacker.

• 40:29Speaker 04

  You don't think he had any possibility that he was the quarterback?

• 40:33Chris Ryan?

  I gotta say, like, so...

• 40:34Bill Simmons?

  6'5 quarterback.

• 40:35Speaker 04

  6'5 quarterback, he's calling the shots.

• 40:38Chris Ryan?

  Oh, you kidding me? Nobody's fucking following Ray in a huddle, who's just like, just do what I tell you to do.

• 40:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 40:44Chris Ryan?

  Heads and limbs, you know? Like, that's not inspiring? That's not Joe Bro.

• 40:49Speaker 04

  What about Big Nick? What position did Big Nick play?

• 40:52Chris Ryan?

  Oh, he was linebacker, wasn't he?

• 40:53Speaker 04

  He's a linebacker?

• 40:54Chris Ryan?

  He was, I thought he played linebacker.

• 40:56Bill Simmons?

  Linebacker and probably third down running back.

• 40:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Can I just say, I did more research on Long Beach Poly versus South Torrance than any other thing I've ever podcasted about.

• 41:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 41:06Chris Ryan?

  And it rivals only trying to figure out what Lakers game they're talking about in Die Hard, uh, when Theo comes into the lobby of the Nakatomi Plaza. But it's really weird that, uh, Nick is popping so much shit about South Torrance. And Long Beach Poly, I think definitively has a better program.

• 41:24Speaker 04

  Dominant.

• 41:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and DeSean Jackson with the Long Beach Poly.

• 41:27Speaker 04

  Dominant.

• 41:27Chris Ryan?

  And Nick's just like, we whipped your ass. I'm like, when? Like, when did that happen?

• 41:32Bill Simmons?

  Well, they had, since we did the first pod, Antonio Pierce became the Raiders coach. He was the head coach for Long Beach Poly for like three, four years. So, yeah, it was a big ass program.

• 41:43Bill Simmons?

  Crushed you guys when I was there, crushed you guys when you were there. Just like, just bizarre. Anyway, uh...

• 41:49Chris Ryan?

  It's like, hey, bro, we're at a Benihana, relax.

• 41:53Bill Simmons?

  That leads to, uh, Ray Merriman standing up. I got family here, bro. Don't appreciate you popping off. It feels like we're gonna have a Benihana fight.

• 42:01Speaker 04

  Right there, yeah.

• 42:02Bill Simmons?

  And then, uh, Butler's partner comes in, does a, have a good night, everybody. It's an unbelievable scene, but it leads to, because I think this is part of the same scene, them getting mad at Donnie and taking him to the murder tent.

• 42:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:17Bill Simmons?

  We call it the murder. It's like the

• 42:18Chris Ryan?

  I would say it would be the

• 42:19Bill Simmons?

  football, but it's the murder tent.

• 42:20Chris Ryan?

  The body disposal area. Yeah.

• 42:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 42:23Chris Ryan?

  They've got the, the, the Samoan dude with the big bucket ready to go like.

• 42:27Bill Simmons?

  I'm trying to think of the oh shit, like if you're walking into a room like that, like Joe Pessy just getting whacked in Goodfellas with, because he's

• 42:34Speaker 04

  Well, he didn't know what was

• 42:35Bill Simmons?

  One second where he knows.

• 42:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:37Chris Ryan?

  There's the, the South African dudes in Lethal Weapon two have the plastic on the floor.

• 42:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, plastic on the floor is bad. When you see the giant garbage can and the guy wearing a equipment.

• 42:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:47Bill Simmons?

  Because he's pouring acid in.

• 42:49Speaker 04

  And then the

• 42:50Chris Ryan?

  That's rough.

• 42:50Speaker 04

  My favorite oh shit moment, and it kills me every time is Speed, uh, Jeff Daniels.

• 42:57Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 42:58Speaker 04

  Where he walks in the house.

• 42:59Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 42:59Speaker 04

  And he's, he's about to get blown the fuck up.

• 43:03Bill Simmons?

  Murder tent's great. Um, the shooting range, gun range, whatever we want to call it.

• 43:10Bill Simmons?

  Nice little battle. And then, and Big Nick's a little impressed by the shooting.

• 43:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's cycling that weapon.

• 43:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he's kind of like likes it.

• 43:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:17Bill Simmons?

  There's, there's an admiration.

• 43:19Chris Ryan?

  There's like a feeling that these guys are going to get in a shootout like from the second they even acknowledge one another.

• 43:23Speaker 04

  They, they check each other like four or five times. It's like he looks, he shakes his head, he looks, he shakes his head. And then Merriman just starts going crazy and Big Nick has a love it. He also realizes at that point how dangerous his adversary is.

• 43:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Uh, we had the fake robbery scene, which is a nice little swerve. The more you see this movie, the more you know where it's going. But that does have the, we're here for the bank's money, not yours or whatever, which is a staple of every high school.

• 43:52Chris Ryan?

  Pico savings alone. My favorite savings alone on Pico is that one.

• 43:55Bill Simmons?

  And then, uh, oh yeah.

• 43:59Bill Simmons?

  Leading to, uh, Donnie going in and having to steal the money, which is one of the most tense scenes when he's trapped in the little cash thing, whatever it's called.

• 44:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:09Bill Simmons?

  Gets out, they shut the cameras off. It's like this whole like five minutes, the guys have to sit there and pretend they're just waiting for the, for the, uh, stuff to come on. Really, really good tense scene.

• 44:20Speaker 04

  He delivers what at least three or four day old Chinese food.

• 44:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 44:26Speaker 04

  And one lady is fucking it up.

• 44:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 44:30Speaker 04

  And getting, and getting in the other lady's face like YouTube finish. I'm like, yo, man, that beef and broccoli been up there since like

• 44:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, right.

• 44:37Chris Ryan?

  Beef and broccoli can smell pretty awful, like in two hours in the fridge.

• 44:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 44:41Chris Ryan?

  Three days in an air duct. Yeah.

• 44:44Bill Simmons?

  Then we have the shootout and the ending is the last two rewatchable scenes. I mean, the last 25 minutes of this movie is probably-

• 44:49Chris Ryan?

  Bill, I'll go you a step further. From the second that Big Nick leaves the playground crying-

• 44:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 44:55Chris Ryan?

  And everybody starts putting vests on is from out, it's an hour and six minutes of perfect cinema.

• 45:02Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 45:02Chris Ryan?

  Because it's just, because it's like, it's basically, it's the savings and loan robbery, the actual heist of the Fed and the shootout in the corridor. And it takes a very long time and it is incredible. And then it's the coda.

• 45:13Speaker 04

  Action reveal, action reveal, action reveal.

• 45:15Bill Simmons?

  So where do you go for most rewatchable, Benihana?

• 45:18Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Benihana is, uh, my heart, my head says the final shootout on the corridor. It's just an amazing piece of filmmaking.

• 45:24Speaker 04

  I got a scene that you didn't, uh, mention. The scene where he finally signs the divorce papers and he crashes there like Little Date with his wife.

• 45:34Chris Ryan?

  Really important. I had this in What's Hates the Best, though.

• 45:36Bill Simmons?

  I had it in What's Hates the Best.

• 45:37Speaker 04

  Any scene where you separate the sharks from the guppies? If you, if you, if you hurt New Date, you gotta go home, turn on the water, get in the shower and just cry. That you didn't get bitched out like that. Like, he, like, he walks in, he eating off the man's-

• 45:56Chris Ryan?

  He's eating lamb chops?

• 45:57Speaker 04

  He drinking his drinks, he talking like that.

• 46:00Chris Ryan?

  It's also perfect because both those guys are wearing like, I golfed earlier.

• 46:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 46:05Chris Ryan?

  And the one dude is just like, "Ah, Nick, I was gonna call you. I was gonna see if you wanted to get dinner." And it's like, bullshit.

• 46:11Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 46:12Speaker 04

  And Nick just sits down in there, "I own this, I own everything."

• 46:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, he says, "Call the fucking cops."

• 46:17Speaker 04

  Call the cops. "Ah, I have the cops."

• 46:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:19Speaker 04

  He's just helpless. I feel so bad for the dude. At the same time, I was like, "Fuck him."

• 46:24Bill Simmons?

  I think if he wants to pursue a relationship with the lady, at some point, he's gotta like, stand up and make it seem like he-

• 46:30Speaker 04

  She's on Hinge. It's over.

• 46:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, like, there's no way you can recover from that.

• 46:34Speaker 04

  She was talking to her girls, "Look, I thought he was so great. He had all of his stuff together."

• 46:38Chris Ryan?

  He didn't even stand up.

• 46:39Speaker 04

  And then fucking Nick walked in and just made him look like a goddamn gimp. It's over.

• 46:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 46:44Speaker 04

  It's done.

• 46:47Bill Simmons?

  What's the most 2018 thing about this movie? I would say, I would say they're the smoking in the bars in LA, which I think now they would just come in and taser you.

• 46:58Chris Ryan?

  I think in 20, I assure you in 2018, they were not, I mean, I-

• 47:02Bill Simmons?

  I thought this was the last vestiges of it, but to me, it really is like the Showtime bump that this, like when it goes on the cable-

• 47:09Chris Ryan?

  Oh yeah, the secondary life thing.

• 47:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the secondary life where if this had just been like, like Carry On on Netflix, it just comes on. I don't know if it hits the same way. I think just the fact that you could jump into the different parts of it, I thought really helped it grow.

• 47:22Speaker 04

  I thought the most 2018 thing was that there were strippers, but no BBLs.

• 47:28Speaker 04

  If you go into that strip club now, it's gonna be some jiggle in that bitch.

• 47:33Chris Ryan?

  That's probably right. That was my-

• 47:34Bill Simmons?

  Did he steal yours, CR?

• 47:39Bill Simmons?

  You gotta, you don't have to come up with another one, we'll just keep going. What's aged the best? So the Donnie twist, once you've seen this movie a couple of times, knowing what he's up to the whole time makes this a really fun rewatch.

• 47:50Chris Ryan?

  And the crucial part is there's, whenever it happens like midway through the movie when Merriman knows, after Benihana, and they're like, okay, Donnie's compromised. Part of you is the first time through, like, okay, you guys are the hitters, like, cut him loose. Like, what do you need the driver for? You can get another driver. But when you go back knowing the entire plan was Donnie's, that's why Merriman was compromising and being like, alright, I guess I'm gonna keep this guy around, cause like, he's the key to the castle.

• 48:16Speaker 04

  If you first watch the movie, you think he's, like, that's real, you think he's dead, right? Because why would they fuck around like that? But then you get to the end, yeah.

• 48:24Bill Simmons?

  Well, tied into that, the art of bartending, his age the best. I love this quote, "Lots of reps. I'm in complete control of my environment. People don't even know." So he says that, and it's a good foreshadowing for what he's up to, but also like, shout out to the bartenders, man.

• 48:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:40Bill Simmons?

  Always never miss a trick. Always know what's going on in the bar and the people around. You're always listening to conversations.

• 48:45Chris Ryan?

  Were you gossip as a bartender?

• 48:47Bill Simmons?

  I heard everything.

• 48:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I heard everything.

• 48:50Chris Ryan?

  Filed it all away. Okay.

• 48:51Bill Simmons?

  Uh, what's aged the best? Suit stores? Guys hanging out in suit stores? Wanna do that on Saturday, CR?

• 48:59Chris Ryan?

  I just wanna get myself a big duster.

• 49:01Bill Simmons?

  Wanna go try out some leather jackets?

• 49:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:05Bill Simmons?

  Wanna come? You're invited. All right. Unspoken stares.

• 49:10Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, testosterone staring.

• 49:13Bill Simmons?

  Lot of testa- like.

• 49:15Chris Ryan?

  Maybe that's the most 2018 thing, and because in 24, they would probably be looking at their phones, but here, they're just still staring at each other.

• 49:21Bill Simmons?

  Still looking at each other. I like that there's some good quotes, like, "Come on, give me a hug, we'll save a fortune in therapy." There's just like some good one-liners in here.

• 49:30Bill Simmons?

  All the UFC fighters, which now that I know UFC a lot more than I did in 2018, like, there's some real dudes in this.

• 49:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, Max Holloway.

• 49:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Max Holloway.

• 49:39Chris Ryan?

  Bispings at the end, right?

• 49:40Speaker 04

  Bispings in this, yeah.

• 49:43Bill Simmons?

  You wanna talk about Butler's leather jackets, Chris?

• 49:46Chris Ryan?

  I mean,

• 49:48Chris Ryan?

  they're just a perfect accoutrement for this character. They're leathery the way the character is leathery, you know?

• 49:52Bill Simmons?

  Would you, if there was the set of them, the game, the movie-worn Den of Thieves 1 leather jackets?

• 49:59Chris Ryan?

  Don't get ahead of yourself on memorabilia, but yeah.

• 50:03Bill Simmons?

  Dan, I love the, any movie where there's a big board with photos of the crew with titles.

• 50:10Speaker 04

  Underboss, boss, boom, boom, and you think, and then, because it all comes back to it at the end, the fact that he had it wrong the whole way. And then he looks, I gotta say something else, man. We real progressive on this, I just gotta take it here. Brothers is masterminds, man. Shout out, Brothers, yeah, give it up, y'all know.

• 50:33Speaker 04

  The rest of y'all ain't classic.

• 50:37Speaker 04

  Okay? Brothers is masterminds. That's how they, that's how they fuck with you, you know? You know what I mean? That's, that's how they fuck with you. Because at the end, you thinking, "Oh, is it Ice Cube, son?"

• 50:49Speaker 04

  And Brothers is masterminds, that really meant something to me.

• 50:54Bill Simmons?

  Shooting range showdowns?

• 50:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:57Bill Simmons?

  I just like them. It's a great place for a thing because you don't know if they're just gonna start shooting each other.

• 51:01Chris Ryan?

  Should be the final job interview to get hired at The Ringer is you gotta go shoot with them.

• 51:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, let's go shoot together. The big board with photos of the crew. Remember Sopranos had a whole, like two-episode arc where they like ended in a really big episode with that.

• 51:14Speaker 04

  I'll never forget that scene because the instrumental was paparazzi by exhibit.

• 51:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 51:18Speaker 04

  And they going through and they moving stuff around and it's like when they look at Tony.

• 51:22Bill Simmons?

  Uncle Junior's down.

• 51:23Speaker 04

  And it's like move Junior down and say put Tony up.

• 51:25Bill Simmons?

  Any other would say the best here?

• 51:27Chris Ryan?

  Uh, yeah, I have when cops print out a bunch of shit that they could easily just look at on a computer screen. Just to be able to hold it up and say, what happened to you?

• 51:38Chris Ryan?

  I also really love opening your movie with a huge crime that you have to top. He does this, Dark Knight does this, Sicario and Drive and The Matrix where you have like a set piece at the beginning and you're like, the bar is already up here.

• 51:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 51:53Chris Ryan?

  And then you top it. It's incredible.

• 51:55Speaker 04

  Um, the FBI slander is golden. It's like this movie takes it to the next level.

• 52:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:03Speaker 04

  And Die Hard is like, oh my God, it's the feds. We're cooler than them. This guy is a vegan FBI cuck.

• 52:12Chris Ryan?

  Who plays bad men or tennis? Why is he lobbying Bob?

• 52:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, you know what I mean? So like.

• 52:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, tennis took some shots in this movie.

• 52:18Speaker 04

  Tennis took some real shots?

• 52:19Bill Simmons?

  Thank God pickleball wasn't around at this point. This would have been really bad.

• 52:23Speaker 04

  Real men play football. FBI vegan cucks play tennis.

• 52:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Any other would say the best?

• 52:29Chris Ryan?

  I, I think that the, the opening text is so needlessly hard. It's so cool. It's up there with, not to jump on Apex Mountain, it's the opening text about bank robberies versus the in Mexico Sicario means hitman. Those are the two greatest title cards I've ever seen.

• 52:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, that one was really super fucking hard, like the Sicario joint. I like that Star Wars scroll though.

• 52:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:53Speaker 04

  You like that shit, dude?

• 52:55Chris Ryan?

  It's too long. It's too long. It's so much reading.

• 52:58Bill Simmons?

  Too long.

• 52:59Speaker 04

  You're in the theater, you're like.

• 53:00Bill Simmons?

  Half asleep by the time it's over.

• 53:02Speaker 04

  You're like, shut the fuck up.

• 53:09Chris Ryan?

  You know what somebody who's got skills should do is redo the Star Wars scroll, but with the text from Den of Thieves. Scrolling up across the galaxy is like the bank robbery capital of the world. Every nine minutes, somebody gets.

• 53:25Bill Simmons?

  It does seem like more movies should just do it. It always works. I'm always down for it. The Fortune 3 Clap Award for most giftable moment. Probably like literally any moment from Benihana, I think can be cut into a two second. What would you have though?

• 53:38Chris Ryan?

  I have, I have Pablo getting up from his, from his rice.

• 53:42Bill Simmons?

  Don't appreciate you popping off, bro.

• 53:44Chris Ryan?

  Don't appreciate you popping off here, bro. We got family.

• 53:46Bill Simmons?

  Great shot order award, most cinematic shot. I like that, that final traffic shootout.

• 53:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:51Bill Simmons?

  Really cool.

• 53:52Chris Ryan?

  The drone shot.

• 53:53Bill Simmons?

  Drone shot. Yeah, that looks great. This is so much fun when we get to give out a category that's from the actual movie. The Den of Thieves Benihana Award for scene stealing location.

• 54:04Chris Ryan?

  So is Benihana.

• 54:05Bill Simmons?

  It goes to Benihana. No.

• 54:07Chris Ryan?

  So we can't.

• 54:08Bill Simmons?

  You give it to yourself.

• 54:09Chris Ryan?

  So, I mean, obviously then.

• 54:10Bill Simmons?

  Listen, if Bill Russell had won the finals MVP after it was named after him, he gets the Bill Russell finals MVP. That's how this works.

• 54:17Speaker 04

  Well, that would be really impressive.

• 54:18Bill Simmons?

  That would have been in the 80s. Kid Cudi Pursuit of Happyness Award.

• 54:23Chris Ryan?

  Wait, can I throw out some runners up for Dennis?

• 54:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, go for it.

• 54:25Chris Ryan?

  I would say Ziggy's Hofbrow and the Men's Wear Store. And the.

• 54:30Speaker 04

  Oh, the donut shop. The donut shop is one too, for sure.

• 54:32Bill Simmons?

  Kid Cudi Pursuit of Happyness Award, Best Needle Drop. Not a lot of music in this, but they.

• 54:37Chris Ryan?

  Well, the music is incredible. There are not a lot of songs.

• 54:39Bill Simmons?

  No, but a lot, a lot of like with lyrics, but What It's Like by Everlast.

• 54:43Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 54:43Bill Simmons?

  Nice little.

• 54:44Speaker 04

  Aw, bruh.

• 54:44Bill Simmons?

  Squeeze that one in there. A little late 90s, baby.

• 54:48Speaker 04

  They call her a killer and they call her a sinner, but he was dropping some knowledge, man.

• 54:54Bill Simmons?

  The Big Kahuna Burger Award for best use of food and drink, unless you guys can top drinking milk right from the cart at six in the morning.

• 55:01Speaker 04

  The donuts.

• 55:02Chris Ryan?

  Bloody Donuts and, and Deb's new, new man's house dinner.

• 55:07Bill Simmons?

  Oh, eating the, eating the food.

• 55:09Speaker 04

  Right off of, yeah. What, what's that? The skirt steak.

• 55:14Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah, the skirt steak.

• 55:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a lot.

• 55:17Bill Simmons?

  Lot of food. It's a very good food and drink movie. Okay, the Butch's. Girlfriend award for weak link of the film. I have, I have a thought, but I don't know. You want me to go first?

• 55:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, for sure.

• 55:29Bill Simmons?

  So there's 50 cars between the robbers trying to get away at the end and the cops. And I just, I'm not sure the cops would just decide to turn a traffic like standstill into an actual shootout.

• 55:43Speaker 04

  Well, I have this in nitpicks.

• 55:45Bill Simmons?

  Cause I just imagine sitting in the car, you're halfway through.

• 55:50Speaker 04

  You're listening to Coward.

• 55:53Bill Simmons?

  A blizzard to the watch.

• 55:54Chris Ryan?

  On the third second about Oregon. Yeah, he's got such a good point.

• 55:58Speaker 04

  At what point they actually going down the, and he's like, get down, get down, get behind the engine block. Y'all about to light the fucking highway up.

• 56:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:07Speaker 04

  You see what this guy got? That gun, that's from Call of Duty. My engine block not gonna help me. Maybe wait to take him down?

• 56:14Bill Simmons?

  It's a class action suit like a week later. Were you in the traffic shootout on?

• 56:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:19Bill Simmons?

  Mark's turn. What do you have for weekly? Anything?

• 56:22Chris Ryan?

  Uh, no, I don't have a weak link. I have, I have a Vincent Chase, which is often.

• 56:26Bill Simmons?

  Okay. What's age the worst? Smoking inside a bar we mentioned. Big Nick going to see his daughter at school? I don't know.

• 56:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:35Bill Simmons?

  I, I, I might've just had him outside the fence crying, but um, I like the shock value of the ending as a what's age the worst because um, the second, third, fourth time you see it, it's not a shock anymore. So it's, it's not the movie's fault, but it's age the worst because you know.

• 56:52Chris Ryan?

  In my head called the Ray Merriman cut where you just end it when he's like, when Ray and, and LeVoe have died, you know, like.

• 56:59Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's it.

• 57:00Chris Ryan?

  And it's basically like this ends like heat basically where these guys have had this confrontation and he, you know, he's like, I didn't bring my cuffs today. You know, it's like that there is a way to end it that way, but the Donnie stuff then unlocks everything that happens afterwards, you know?

• 57:14Speaker 04

  Um, so I think the eating the donuts off the ground is age the worst.

• 57:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 57:18Speaker 04

  Especially now because like we got Ozempic. We don't even want them donuts no more.

• 57:22Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 57:23Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 57:23Bill Simmons?

  He's just taking a glutide.

• 57:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:25Bill Simmons?

  Um, the biggest one for me, and this isn't the movie's fault because they had a certain budget, but they filmed a lot of it in Atlanta. And I think if they knew it was gonna be as big of a movie as it became, I just think we're getting more actual LA in this movie than Atlanta pretending to be LA. Cause we noticed, but the most, I would say almost everybody who sees this movie would not notice.

• 57:46Chris Ryan?

  First time through, I was like, damn, LA. And then like, there's one shot outside of Nick's girl, ex-wife's house or wife's house, where like, there, there's no foliage and you're like, oh.

• 57:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 57:55Speaker 04

  You know what's funny?

• 57:55Chris Ryan?

  This is fall.

• 57:56Speaker 04

  Is that, and CR can attest to this, I just realized it today.

• 58:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:02Speaker 04

  Like, I just realized it today.

• 58:04Chris Ryan?

  That's a testament to it being cool.

• 58:05Speaker 04

  I actually just came in and said, yo, is this a more LA movie than Heat? Cause it, it, they continuously drop different LA stuff all throughout. It's part of the DNA of the movie, but yeah, like, once it's playing out, you notice.

• 58:17Bill Simmons?

  We have a category called the Mark Ruffalo, Vincent Hanna, Saul Rubenek, Linda Partridge, Overacting Award, which is, doesn't even necessarily mean overacting. It's really for somebody who's dialing it up. Gerard Butler not only wins this, um, it's one of the reasons the movie is as much fun as it is. Cause he's going for it the entire fucking time.

• 58:38Chris Ryan?

  If you get to have a scene where you're wasted and a scene when you're brutally hung over, like, it's, you're gonna win Rubenek, yeah.

• 58:44Bill Simmons?

  It's the triple crown.

• 58:45Speaker 04

  And a scene where you cry.

• 58:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:47Speaker 04

  After you, they, you got the whole gamut of emotions.

• 58:51Bill Simmons?

  Was there a better title for this movie, Van?

• 58:55Speaker 04

  I don't think so.

• 58:55Bill Simmons?

  I don't think so either.

• 58:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 58:57Chris Ryan?

  No, like robbery capital of the world, like, doesn't, I don't know. Den of Thieves is sick.

• 59:00Speaker 04

  Den of Thieves is sick.

• 59:01Bill Simmons?

  It's gonna be interesting though, when it has sequels, cause eventually like Fast and Furious became Fast Five, Fast Six, and then we shorthand, I don't know if we're gonna be shorthanding Den or Thieves.

• 59:10Speaker 04

  Thieves Eight.

• 59:11Bill Simmons?

  Thieves Eight? I think it's gonna be Thieves, right?

• 59:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 59:15Bill Simmons?

  Oh, wow, look at that. The, uh, Can You Dig It Award for Most Memorable Quote.

• 59:22Bill Simmons?

  People that have things to hide never have much to say. Good high school yearbook quote.

• 59:26Chris Ryan?

  I have, I, I, I have the exchange where Ray's like, I ain't cuffing up. And, and Nick's like, that's okay, I didn't bring my cuffs anyway.

• 59:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 59:34Bill Simmons?

  Um, okay, the CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford. Hottest Take Award.

• 59:40Chris Ryan?

  If you.

• 59:41Bill Simmons?

  What do you got, CR?

• 59:42Chris Ryan?

  If you know you're getting Den of Thieves Two, do you keep Ray alive?

• 59:49Chris Ryan?

  Do you keep Ray alive? Like, is, is Merriman so cool in this movie and such a viable character? I know it ends the movie with such a profound, like, period at the end.

• 59:59Speaker 04

  Into the sentence, but Pablo is so good in this that would you be like Nick goes to get Ray out of jail to help him catch Donnie is the second part. So I maybe probably, okay, but I do think that there's obviously some utility in killing him because I think the statement that the movie makes. The movie to me, the underlying theme of the movie is predator versus prey. Right. And the entire movie, you think that he is a predator, but he's actually just prey. The two apex predators that were left at the end of the movie had different skill sets. Sure. One of them was a big bruising. Physical threat.

• 1:00:42Speaker 04

  And the other one was your Lex Luthor. Sure. And so like that, that, the, that, and I don't know why, you know, you're giving away ideas, but that sequel that you had in mind actually would be dope. But him going out like actual prey actually like works in the movie really well, too. What do you think?

• 1:01:02Bill Simmons?

  Ray's twin brother, Rick Merriman.

• 1:01:09Bill Simmons?

  Ray was QB, Rick was the receiver. Rick's leading, Rick's leading a good normal life. He lives in Austin. Never got into the family business.

• 1:01:17Speaker 04

  Definitely, yeah, I like that idea. Sean Merriman is his actual.

• 1:01:21Bill Simmons?

  Sean Merriman.

• 1:01:22Speaker 04

  And Sean, he played football.

• 1:01:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:25Speaker 04

  You know, he was playing for the, the Chargers at this point. They have, they, they had to be played, I don't know about Denzel, bringing it like, you know, they have brothers or something. Now we cook it.

• 1:01:36Bill Simmons?

  All right. I have, uh, so this movie, what, you know, the movie viewers, when they were doing the, how it's like heat. There's some stuff that's the same, like they have, uh, there's bank guys over the top cop in a bad relationship. Two sides casing each other out, the side, the, the bad guys knowing they're being followed by the good guys, trying to get info on them. Big shootouts at the beginning and the end. Hero cop converting his wife's new guy downtown LA.

• 1:02:05Bill Simmons?

  The, the scene with the messed up hero cop trying to connect with the younger girl. And then the, uh, the black cop sidekick. So there's a lot of like stuff in there. I'm fine with all of it. Guess what? We love heat about as much as they do. Why can't more movies emulate heat?

• 1:02:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, those things.

• 1:02:21Bill Simmons?

  Like, why, why? This is a bad thing.

• 1:02:23Chris Ryan?

  Exist until I die in L.A.

• 1:02:25Bill Simmons?

  He's emulating Michael Jordan.

• 1:02:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:26Speaker 04

  I mean, yeah, it happens. It happened in North Hollywood. The actual fucking thing happened. I mean, these are things that, you know, get reflected in movies because shootouts happen, things like that.

• 1:02:38Bill Simmons?

  So casting what ifs we couldn't find anyway?

• 1:02:40Chris Ryan?

  Not really.

• 1:02:41Bill Simmons?

  But the director is here. Where is he?

• 1:02:43Chris Ryan?

  Chris is here, so maybe you could tell us later, yeah.

• 1:02:45Bill Simmons?

  Was there, was there a casting what if? Was there anybody that was supposed to be in this movie and it didn't happen? Where is he?

• 1:02:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's what the internet. See, this movie hasn't been out. What happens with the rewatchables is the movie's out thirty years, and then it's like,

• 1:03:01Chris Ryan?

  Every single person.

• 1:03:02Bill Simmons?

  Ryan Reynolds was going to do Den of Thieves, and then he backed out.

• 1:03:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:05Bill Simmons?

  You just never know what's true and not true. So this movie hasn't been out long enough. Oh, this is good. We get to give out the Van Lathan Award. Did this movie need more black people, Van?

• 1:03:14Speaker 04

  I have an idea.

• 1:03:17Speaker 04

  Could have been different. Den of Thieves: Race War.

• 1:03:23Chris Ryan?

  Did you actually have this written down, or is this?

• 1:03:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:26Speaker 04

  All black cast. Den of Thieves: Race War. It's what we do.

• 1:03:33Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:03:35Bill Simmons?

  Which is this, like, the fourth one or the fifth one?

• 1:03:37Speaker 04

  You laugh about it, like, so, for some reason, we got all black cops, all white high school people. Okay? They played high school football. The black guys used to fuck them up. They're mad. They start robbing banks.

• 1:03:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:56Speaker 04

  And now we gotta get one more victory over them. So more black people, all black cast, but Den of Thieves: Race War.

• 1:04:05Chris Ryan?

  It has, if it happened, it would have to be written exactly like that and in that voice, where like the white robbers would be like, "I'm so mad we used to get our asses whipped by those black guys in football. Let's rob banks."

• 1:04:18Speaker 04

  We're getting, we're getting back at Dorsey High.

• 1:04:23Speaker 04

  We're getting back at Crenshaw. You know what I mean? Yeah, we getting back at Fairfax. We are Notre Dame. We are Harvard-Westlake.

• 1:04:36Bill Simmons?

  So Hoosiers Cross With Heat.

• 1:04:38Speaker 04

  Hoosiers Cross With Heat.

• 1:04:40Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:04:43Bill Simmons?

  Race four, the fourth one. Yeah, perfect. Best That Guy Award.

• 1:04:50Bill Simmons?

  I mean, that guy from this movie and Shotcaller, who we know as Evan Jones, but I think Chris and I are one of the only two people that know.

• 1:04:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:59Bill Simmons?

  To me, he's got a win, but would you put, is there anybody else in there?

• 1:05:02Chris Ryan?

  Don Oliveri, because she was, and she's been on a bunch of Taylor Sheridan stuff.

• 1:05:07Bill Simmons?

  That's Big Nick's wife? Meadow Williams is Ray's girlfriend, but you didn't know her name.

• 1:05:11Speaker 04

  There's, there's one guy, a Russian guy that plays one of the truck drivers. And I see him in stuff all the time. I don't.

• 1:05:18Chris Ryan?

  That's a good That Guy, though.

• 1:05:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, I've seen him in a bunch of different things.

• 1:05:21Bill Simmons?

  So Dion Waiters Award for Best Heat Check in the Movie. This is somebody that's in for a couple scenes, and then that's it. I have the two ladies ordering the Chinese food.

• 1:05:30Speaker 04

  Do you like that?

• 1:05:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they're only in like two scenes. They're just bringing the heat. She's pissed off. She's like, go stop that guy!

• 1:05:36Speaker 04

  I knew it was coming.

• 1:05:38Bill Simmons?

  What?

• 1:05:38Speaker 04

  No, I like him, I like him.

• 1:05:40Bill Simmons?

  Who else did you have? Everyone else is in it too much.

• 1:05:42Speaker 04

  Everybody is. It's a small cast. There's not a lot going on. Like, so, no, I think, I mean, you could almost, the FBI guy is really turning it on.

• 1:05:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Oh, tennis guy?

• 1:05:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:05:58Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures Wild Horse 9. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell. I like those guys. Star in the Sharp-Rated Comedy Thriller from Academy Award winner Martin McDonagh. Writer-director of The Banshees of Inisherin and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Set in the 1970s, filmed on location on Easter Island. Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA agents Chris and Lee, who are caught in a dangerous game of secrets and survival. Also starring Steve Buscemi, another one of my guys. Parker Posey and Tom Waits. Wild Horse 9 is being hailed by critics as a revitalizing shot of pure entertainment and easily one of the best films of the year. Don't miss Wild Horse 9, only in theaters Friday. Get tickets now.

• 1:06:44Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Boar's Head. You know what I love about football season? It's the football, but also the football watching food. And nothing hits like a Boar's Head sandwich when I'm watching a game. Really, any game day sandwich better with Boar's Head. Philly cheesesteak, layer up buttery slider rolls with Boar's Head and London broil roast beef, American white cheese, and picante provolone. Delicious. Then add roasted onions, peppers, and Boar's Head pub-style horseradish sauce. I love horseradish. And you've got the ultimate game day cheesesteak. You've also got a whole lineup of premium meats, cheeses, hummus, and dips, condiments, and more to serve up on game day. Head to your local Boar's Head deli counter to shop now. For game day sandwich inspiration and more, visit boar'shead.com. Boar's Head, committed to craft since 1905.

• 1:07:28Bill Simmons?

  Recasting couch director city. CR, we're obsessed with Landman right now. What if we had Ally Larter's character from Landman as Big Nick's ex-wife?

• 1:07:40Bill Simmons?

  Just go, just going for it.

• 1:07:42Chris Ryan?

  I don't think she would have taken that text message as gracefully as Deb did, but yeah.

• 1:07:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, she probably would have stabbed him.

• 1:07:47Chris Ryan?

  I was thinking, because we were talking earlier, we did a quick video where we were talking about what, what's next for Timothy Chalamet. And while I obviously approve of going forward with the Den of Thieves into the future, what if we did young Nick?

• 1:08:01Bill Simmons?

  Oh, early Nick O'Brien.

• 1:08:03Chris Ryan?

  Early days on the LAPD, going into LASD, like getting acquainted with the LA underworld.

• 1:08:10Bill Simmons?

  A prequel.

• 1:08:12Speaker 04

  Playing football, yeah.

• 1:08:13Bill Simmons?

  I like it. I had, I said initially, I was trying to, when we did the first pod, I was talking about how we could have gotten like a funny character in this, because it's been a pretty weighty movie. And I was talking about it.

• 1:08:24Chris Ryan?

  I laugh a lot, though.

• 1:08:26Bill Simmons?

  If Dave Chappelle was Butler's sidekick. Dave Chappelle.

• 1:08:30Chris Ryan?

  Chill.

• 1:08:33Bill Simmons?

  Hold on, bear with me. Hold on, hold on.

• 1:08:38Chris Ryan?

  But with like a bunch of gun training and stuff, that would be so weird.

• 1:08:41Bill Simmons?

  He's, he's swimming against, you don't, you didn't know he had it in him, but he's got like the three moments where he really makes fun of Big Nick and it's funny. But I, I think I was wrong with that. I actually like, I wouldn't change.

• 1:08:55Bill Simmons?

  I would have changed the cast, this is where I landed. But I was trying to think, how do we get a funny person in this? Who is like the...

• 1:09:02Chris Ryan?

  I think Bosco could have been funnier. Like Bosco could have been like, that's like the Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers role. You know what I mean? Like there's...

• 1:09:08Bill Simmons?

  Who would you put in? Like one person who's like, three times just busting Nick's balls.

• 1:09:13Speaker 04

  Um, I mean, so it's interesting. The Dave Chappelle thing, you know, Dave Chappelle is kind of slow now.

• 1:09:21Bill Simmons?

  Now we're back.

• 1:09:22Speaker 04

  I mean, no, he is kind of slow now.

• 1:09:23Bill Simmons?

  I'm talking 2018 Star is Born, Dave Chappelle.

• 1:09:26Chris Ryan?

  You want like Shane Gillis to play Murph, right? Like you want like...

• 1:09:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, just like three jokes.

• 1:09:30Speaker 04

  It would almost have to be one of the cops, though.

• 1:09:32Chris Ryan?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 1:09:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:33Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:09:34Bill Simmons?

  Three jokes about Big Nick. I can't believe you ate that donut, that was disgusting.

• 1:09:38Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:09:38Bill Simmons?

  Joke.

• 1:09:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, I get it, I get it, yeah.

• 1:09:42Bill Simmons?

  Tony Romo, Chris Collinsworth, or someone else for the director's commentary? What do you have, CR?

• 1:09:48Chris Ryan?

  What if Doris Burke was calling the prom date intervention? "We see you, Mr. Laveau. For the past 16 years, you've been responsible for your daughter's safety. Now she's going out in the world, prom night, with a gang-affiliated teenager named Ronaldo. A huge moment in any father's life, but you've got half a dozen South Pacific Islander linemen and a cop killer named Ray Merriman by her side. It's not prom, it's not a prom night we will soon forget."

• 1:10:24Bill Simmons?

  Unfortunately, now when I watch ESPN NBA, I just think of CR during Doris.

• 1:10:28Chris Ryan?

  She also never speaks in that much of a monologue. It's just like, I don't know how it's gotten out of control like that.

• 1:10:34Bill Simmons?

  I, uh, that scene when, when, um, Donny's in the bankroom and they shut the cameras off and it's super tense there. Tony Romo easily, I think, could have, could have come through. "They turned the cameras off, Jim! He's only got three minutes, he's gotta get to the bank." I was thinking about that yesterday as he was having an orgasm about, uh, Josh Allen.

• 1:10:59Bill Simmons?

  Half-Assed Internet Research. So Christian, the director that's here, he started writing this movie in 2003. So this is a 15-year odyssey. Inspiring story, Van. You've worked on some movie projects in your life. 15 years. A decade and a half.

• 1:11:16Speaker 04

  It's a lot. Yeah, I mean, you gotta commit.

• 1:11:18Chris Ryan?

  Maybe in 2050, we'll make Den of Thieves: Race War. You never know.

• 1:11:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it could happen.

• 1:11:23Chris Ryan?

  Keep plugging away.

• 1:11:24Speaker 04

  I'm ready.

• 1:11:25Bill Simmons?

  This movie was released in some countries with the title Criminal Squad.

• 1:11:34Bill Simmons?

  Ziggy's Bar is in Atlanta. It's called Johnny's Hideaway. Everyone wanna go?

• 1:11:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Is Ziggy's Hofbrot based on Sam's Hofbrot here? Isn't that off Olympic somewhere? Yeah, okay, thank you.

• 1:11:46Speaker 04

  Is it? Did you ask where Sam's Hofbrot is?

• 1:11:48Chris Ryan?

  It's off Olympic.

• 1:11:49Speaker 04

  I can show you.

• 1:11:50Chris Ryan?

  Okay. I've been to Bar's too, man. Yeah.

• 1:11:53Speaker 04

  Have you been to Sam's?

• 1:11:54Chris Ryan?

  I've not been to Sam's.

• 1:11:56Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:11:57Chris Ryan?

  You wanna go now?

• 1:11:58Speaker 04

  We can go.

• 1:11:59Chris Ryan?

  We can go.

• 1:12:01Speaker 04

  Don't fall in love.

• 1:12:06Speaker 04

  It's going down in that motherfucker.

• 1:12:11Bill Simmons?

  So there's a military consultant who did separate bootcamps for both sides.

• 1:12:16Speaker 04

  I'm always-

• 1:12:17Bill Simmons?

  To train them.

• 1:12:17Speaker 04

  I always wonder about this.

• 1:12:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:19Speaker 04

  Particularly-

• 1:12:20Bill Simmons?

  Paul Maurice.

• 1:12:20Speaker 04

  With the Taylor Sheridan stuff?

• 1:12:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:22Speaker 04

  You almost wonder if Taylor Sheridan was like in the service, like-

• 1:12:26Chris Ryan?

  He was not.

• 1:12:27Speaker 04

  How the vernacular comes out. But in this one, there's a lot of tactical stuff, and I always wonder.

• 1:12:33Bill Simmons?

  In the closing credits, the $100 bill has the serial number DOT 00002018 for Den of Thieves. Gotta really catch that. Takes some time. All right, Apex Mountain. Gerard Butler.

• 1:12:49Chris Ryan?

  I think you could make the argument that this is the second phase of his career as Apex.

• 1:12:54Bill Simmons?

  The Fallen movies?

• 1:12:55Chris Ryan?

  But I think-

• 1:12:56Bill Simmons?

  Or 300?

• 1:12:56Chris Ryan?

  300 is the first peak.

• 1:12:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, who's it? Where do more conversations now? 300 or Den of Thieves?

• 1:13:01Chris Ryan?

  Well, Den of Thieves in our bubble.

• 1:13:03Bill Simmons?

  Longer tail.

• 1:13:04Chris Ryan?

  I think Den of Thieves now.

• 1:13:06Bill Simmons?

  300 probably played more at sporting events.

• 1:13:08Speaker 04

  It's, yeah, 300. It's probably, it's probably 300, but he's more this guy now.

• 1:13:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:16Speaker 04

  So it's an interesting one.

• 1:13:18Bill Simmons?

  I think it's become this. Pablo Schreiber.

• 1:13:22Chris Ryan?

  It's This or the Wire.

• 1:13:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, This or the Wire, yeah.

• 1:13:24Bill Simmons?

  I think it's this. Suit stores?

• 1:13:28Speaker 04

  Suit stores in a movie?

• 1:13:29Bill Simmons?

  Suit stores.

• 1:13:30Chris Ryan?

  Like in films or in general?

• 1:13:31Bill Simmons?

  No, all suit stores ever.

• 1:13:35Chris Ryan?

  This is a very specific kind of suit store where you can get a suit and a leather duster and cowboy.

• 1:13:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, the three for three suit store, for sure.

• 1:13:41Bill Simmons?

  Three for three suit store, great. The Federal Reserve Bank in Los Angeles.

• 1:13:46Speaker 04

  Didn't even know it was a thing, so yeah.

• 1:13:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, the Fed.

• 1:13:49Bill Simmons?

  Never, never been to take it down.

• 1:13:50Chris Ryan?

  Also, it could be apex mountain of things being described like Fort Knox.

• 1:13:57Bill Simmons?

  Long Beach Poly versus South Torrance. I'm gonna say this was the fucking apex.

• 1:14:01Chris Ryan?

  It's certainly the apex for South Torrance, because otherwise it's Chad Morton.

• 1:14:07Bill Simmons?

  Shooting ranges in a movie. I, I still got a Beverly Hills Cop 2.

• 1:14:11Speaker 04

  Beverly Hills Cop 2, yeah.

• 1:14:12Bill Simmons?

  Really important, huge, bigger, bigger for the plot.

• 1:14:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:14:16Bill Simmons?

  Uh, Benihana? In a movie?

• 1:14:19Speaker 04

  It's actually Benihana, which is unclear still.

• 1:14:22Bill Simmons?

  Christian, was it a Benihana?

• 1:14:26Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 1:14:27Bill Simmons?

  That counts, we're counting it.

• 1:14:27Chris Ryan?

  This is invaluable, by the way.

• 1:14:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:29Chris Ryan?

  We could have just been doing this for two hours.

• 1:14:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:14:34Bill Simmons?

  Accidental text to a stripper that go to your wife in a movie?

• 1:14:38Speaker 04

  In a movie, yes. In life, not even close.

• 1:14:43Bill Simmons?

  In life, that would be Tiger Woods, right?

• 1:14:44Chris Ryan?

  What's the text? It's like, you're such a bad bitch?

• 1:14:47Bill Simmons?

  What? Is he here?

• 1:14:50Speaker 04

  Thank you. The, nah, the text was, uh, nah, I can't fuck over him like that, man.

• 1:14:57Bill Simmons?

  Heat homage, second generation Heat movies. It's basically this verse.

• 1:15:02Speaker 04

  The town.

• 1:15:03Bill Simmons?

  Versus Triple Frontier.

• 1:15:04Chris Ryan?

  Triple Frontier is, is a war movie, though, right?

• 1:15:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, Triple Frontier is not.

• 1:15:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but it's still a heist.

• 1:15:09Speaker 04

  I mean, it's a heist, but the town is much.

• 1:15:10Bill Simmons?

  It's got that same vibe.

• 1:15:11Speaker 04

  The, the town is much more on the nose as far as like that type of thing that you're talking about.

• 1:15:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, okay. Uh, Widows, that's a good one.

• 1:15:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:19Speaker 04

  That's a really good one. Sexism stopped us from bringing it up.

• 1:15:24Bill Simmons?

  Tacking up for a street gunfight after a heist?

• 1:15:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, this is, this is about as good as I've ever seen putting on bulletproof vests.

• 1:15:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. O'Shea Jackson Jr.

• 1:15:35Speaker 04

  Hmm, you got, so you got this, you got Shred Al Compton, Shred Al Compton, and you also have?

• 1:15:42Chris Ryan?

  I think he's Donny now.

• 1:15:44Speaker 04

  You think he's Donny now?

• 1:15:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think it's, I think it's, I think it's actually gonna be the sequel.

• 1:15:49Speaker 04

  Oh, the sequel is gonna be?

• 1:15:50Chris Ryan?

  That's a good shot.

• 1:15:51Bill Simmons?

  I think that's gonna be Apex Mountain.

• 1:15:52Speaker 04

  I DM'd him and let him know we were doing this. He's like, "Yeah, man. Hell, yeah."

• 1:15:58Chris Ryan?

  Is that how he sounded?

• 1:15:59Speaker 04

  He's a nice guy. He's a nice, basic guy.

• 1:16:02Chris Ryan?

  We're like, "Hey, man, I got this script idea called Race War."

• 1:16:05Speaker 04

  Race War.

• 1:16:07Bill Simmons?

  Think about it.

• 1:16:07Chris Ryan?

  It's about these white football players.

• 1:16:12Bill Simmons?

  Uh, bad, bad things happening at a donut store in a movie. I'm still going Boogie Nights.

• 1:16:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:17Speaker 04

  Oh, Boogie Nights for sure.

• 1:16:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, even though that did lead to Buck being able to open his own stereo.

• 1:16:22Chris Ryan?

  The question is, is it the same donut shop? I guess not, because that's in the valley and this is...

• 1:16:26Bill Simmons?

  Drinking milk right from the carton, probably Anchorman.

• 1:16:29Speaker 04

  Anchorman is up there.

• 1:16:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:31Chris Ryan?

  It was a terrible choice.

• 1:16:32Bill Simmons?

  And then, uh, Angel City Donuts.

• 1:16:34Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:16:35Bill Simmons?

  I think this was Apex Mountain for wherever that was. All right, uh, next category is Cruiser Hanks.

• 1:16:41Chris Ryan?

  I got Hanks' Big Nick.

• 1:16:44Bill Simmons?

  Really? Make the case. Let's hear it.

• 1:16:47Chris Ryan?

  I feel like Hanks post Saving Private Ryan could do it. I think he's got, I think he, he spent some time with Sizmore. He's, he's got, he knows about late nights and coming out of, coming out of Saving Private Ryan, we could have seen it. Are you trying to tell me Tom Cruise could have been anywhere in this film?

• 1:17:06Speaker 04

  Wait a minute. I want everybody to close your eyes and think about Tom Hanks walking into that fucking dinner and stealing the meat off the cat.

• 1:17:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:16Chris Ryan?

  Tom Hanks saying, "The food sucks. We come here for the ass."

• 1:17:25Chris Ryan?

  Like Tom Cruise saying it would be just as crazy. We come here for the ass.

• 1:17:32Bill Simmons?

  I actually thought Cruise, because it would have been the Cruise that I like where he just tries to become this alternate crazy personality.

• 1:17:39Speaker 04

  Like collateral?

• 1:17:40Bill Simmons?

  As Big Nick.

• 1:17:41Chris Ryan?

  Cruise as Big Nick.

• 1:17:43Bill Simmons?

  Cruise is 5'7".

• 1:17:46Bill Simmons?

  Well, he'd be medium Nick.

• 1:17:47Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:17:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I guess Cruise, maybe.

• 1:17:52Chris Ryan?

  Can you imagine Cruise piecing off against Pablo Schreiber?

• 1:17:55Bill Simmons?

  Well, I think we have to get rid of Pablo if Cruise is in it.

• 1:17:58Speaker 04

  It's gonna look like a Make-A-Wish outing.

• 1:18:05Speaker 04

  Big Brothers on LA.

• 1:18:09Speaker 04

  It was nasty, bro.

• 1:18:11Bill Simmons?

  I think if Cruise is in, Pablo is probably not in the movie. We're probably recasting.

• 1:18:15Chris Ryan?

  We gotta get a shorter way.

• 1:18:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's a shorter cast.

• 1:18:17Chris Ryan?

  It's like more of like a slot receiver guy.

• 1:18:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:18:20Bill Simmons?

  So you think Hanks, after trying to be like America's uncle?

• 1:18:25Chris Ryan?

  You give me a binary choice of Cruise or Hanks. I tell you, it's Hanks.

• 1:18:27Bill Simmons?

  What are you, you're the tiebreaker?

• 1:18:29Speaker 04

  So it would have to be Hanks.

• 1:18:30Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:18:31Speaker 04

  It would have to be Hanks.

• 1:18:31Bill Simmons?

  I think you're right. I just wanted to see Cruise.

• 1:18:34Chris Ryan?

  Cruise could play Bob and Bob.

• 1:18:35Speaker 04

  Cruise has played more roles like this before.

• 1:18:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, he's like, he's in collateral, like he's done shit like that, yeah.

• 1:18:43Bill Simmons?

  Racehorse, rock band, wrestler, fantasy team name. I'll give you Angel City Donuts or Ziggy's Hoffbrow.

• 1:18:48Chris Ryan?

  I like, I like calling a horse Long Beach Polly.

• 1:18:51Bill Simmons?

  Oh, nice.

• 1:18:52Speaker 04

  Long Beach Polly is good.

• 1:18:53Bill Simmons?

  All right, picking nits. Scottish Gerard Butler as a South Torrance football star. Go.

• 1:19:05Speaker 04

  Bro, you can't tell me he don't have that whole Bill Romanowski thing.

• 1:19:07Bill Simmons?

  No, he does. He's just, he's Scottish.

• 1:19:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:10Bill Simmons?

  But he has it pretty well, but I just, I have the background in it.

• 1:19:15Bill Simmons?

  So Hawthorne to Wilmington, 14-mile ride. Just gonna flag that, just having lived in LA for the last 22 years, like 14 miles is a long way.

• 1:19:25Chris Ryan?

  This is the collateral, the collateral rule of LA traffic.

• 1:19:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, there's some, there's some math stuff. There's more later. Should Donny have immediately asked for an attorney when he woke up in a hotel room with P. L. over himself?

• 1:19:36Speaker 04

  Well, I think.

• 1:19:37Bill Simmons?

  Like, I would have.

• 1:19:38Chris Ryan?

  Did you get the impression that LA, he would be like, oh, did you want representation?

• 1:19:42Speaker 04

  He tells him, I'm in the gang.

• 1:19:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:44Speaker 04

  I'm a cop in the gang.

• 1:19:45Bill Simmons?

  Before he does that, maybe I'd like to talk to an attorney.

• 1:19:47Speaker 04

  Bro, I watch interrogation videos.

• 1:19:51Speaker 04

  They don't be asking for attorneys, man.

• 1:19:54Bill Simmons?

  So Van's gotta explain this to the, to the audience.

• 1:19:56Speaker 04

  What?

• 1:19:57Bill Simmons?

  The interrogation, you guys know what interrogation videos are?

• 1:20:00Speaker 04

  Y'all watching interrogation, y'all watching interrogation videos?

• 1:20:02Bill Simmons?

  Where are you watching this?

• 1:20:03Speaker 04

  I'm watching them on YouTube.

• 1:20:05Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:20:05Speaker 04

  Red Tree Crimes, Explore With Us, all kinds of stuff. Cops sit down and they go, "Hey, listen, we know you're not a bad person. We know you killed your entire family. We just wanna know why." And the, and the, the entire time, the person, you're like, "Ask for the lawyer, ask for the lawyer, ask for the lawyer, ask for the lawyer."

• 1:20:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:24Speaker 04

  By the end of it, they eating Popeyes and doing 150 years.

• 1:20:33Bill Simmons?

  I would ask for an attorney if I was Donny. We covered, "Why does Merriman know this much about the Bank of Banks?" I don't know how he gets that information in 2018. What do you have? I have some more.

• 1:20:42Chris Ryan?

  Uh, it takes me like 10 minutes and I have to like go outside and wait for Uber Eats to drop off my lunch at Spotify, but the Chinese food delivery guy can get inside of the Fed and like wander around the cafeteria.

• 1:20:55Bill Simmons?

  With two ba, with two bags?

• 1:20:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and it just seems like they could add a tighter Chinese food delivery protocol at the Fed.

• 1:21:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, maybe just drop it off at the front desk.

• 1:21:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, just be like, "Hey, your, your food's here. You can come down and get it."

• 1:21:06Speaker 04

  So, this is maybe the biggest nit I've ever picked in any movie ever. Okay, he's sitting there, and Big Nick looks at him. He looks at Donny, and he says, "You got a small pecker for a black guy." And Donny says, "Nothing."

• 1:21:28Speaker 04

  Donny, Donny doesn't say, "You ain't seen it when..." 'Cause I'm a grower. You can go ask these chicks from where I'm from, and they'll straight tell you. That's bullshit. Is, is women in the room? Is other dudes in the room? And he just accepts that. No. I'm gonna tell, nah, you don't even know what average is. You, you, that's not for real. You talking to somebody else. Obviously, I pee for myself, so my shit was like...

• 1:21:58Chris Ryan?

  It's a side effect of being tased.

• 1:22:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, I was tased, I'm nervous. You can't make that, by that? Nah, let's talk about the heist. Nah, before we talk about the heist, let's deal with this issue of you saying this.

• 1:22:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:14Chris Ryan?

  Good, good nitpick, man. Yeah.

• 1:22:19Bill Simmons?

  So, Donnie bags up all the hundred dollar bills that are being shredded and he's got, I don't know how many bags.

• 1:22:28Bill Simmons?

  Based on the weight of one hundred dollar bills, one million dollars would weigh twenty-two pounds.

• 1:22:33Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:22:35Bill Simmons?

  So thirty million and a hundred dollar bills weighs six hundred and sixty-one point five pounds, according to the internet.

• 1:22:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:42Bill Simmons?

  Do you think he dumped six hundred and sixty-one point five pounds over that thing in two minutes?

• 1:22:50Chris Ryan?

  I mean, you'd probably be like, this is, this is for all the marbles.

• 1:22:52Bill Simmons?

  And those bags were tiny.

• 1:22:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:55Bill Simmons?

  It's a nitpick. I mean, I've seen this movie seventeen times.

• 1:22:58Chris Ryan?

  We should have brought six hundred pounds out here and seen how fast.

• 1:23:01Bill Simmons?

  Would have been a good, yeah, could have tasted it now.

• 1:23:04Speaker 04

  Six hundred pounds of what?

• 1:23:05Bill Simmons?

  So.

• 1:23:06Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, Bill could swing that.

• 1:23:14Bill Simmons?

  So, Donnie, because he has access to the people that go in and out of the bank, then he writes down the entire ventilation system on a bunch of napkins?

• 1:23:25Bill Simmons?

  I just want to talk it out.

• 1:23:26Speaker 04

  So, so this one, so every once in a while, the movie, you have to suspend, the movie doesn't work unless he's like a super genius. Right? So the movie, that has.

• 1:23:36Chris Ryan?

  Well, I think you're supposed to imagine that, like, the little bits you're seeing, multiply it by a thousand. He's been at the bar for however long, hearing these people come in, they leave their ID cards there, they're talking about the new woman at the cafeteria, whatever, and that he's been accumulating this knowledge over the course of this period.

• 1:23:53Speaker 04

  And then at some point, he had so much information, he goes, I could, this could be actionable in some kind of way.

• 1:23:58Bill Simmons?

  How many days was the Chinese food order up above the bathroom?

• 1:24:02Chris Ryan?

  And there's probably an answer to that. I don't know. It's like.

• 1:24:04Bill Simmons?

  Like, it's at least five? So if you have Chinese food in the fridge for five days, it's risky.

• 1:24:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:17Bill Simmons?

  I'm trying to think, what could have been eaten by either of those ladies over the court? That could, the Chinese food exists.

• 1:24:25Speaker 04

  She was getting busy.

• 1:24:26Bill Simmons?

  Would have to be cold?

• 1:24:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was cold, but remember there's-

• 1:24:28Bill Simmons?

  So I'm saying initially cold, like a cold lo mein, something like that?

• 1:24:32Speaker 04

  Oh, you're talking about like what they would have ordered?

• 1:24:34Chris Ryan?

  Oh yeah, what was the order that they were like, "That's cool, this tastes normal."

• 1:24:37Bill Simmons?

  Cause if it's like just beef with broccoli, that thing, that thing's like moving by Thursday.

• 1:24:43Speaker 04

  But also, it was like, it was so late, they could have been like, "Oh my god, it's just not hot anymore." Hungry as fuck.

• 1:24:50Bill Simmons?

  One of those things smelled really bad, I'm guessing. Um, so Merriman sprinting?

• 1:24:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:58Bill Simmons?

  Wasn't impressed. Guy was supposed to be like this kick-ass football player, I didn't like how he ran. I don't know whether like some back injuries-

• 1:25:06Chris Ryan?

  Do you mean like in the Miles Turner way, where you're like, "I don't like how you run?"

• 1:25:09Bill Simmons?

  Didn't feel athletic enough to me. Combine, I'm crossing them off my list.

• 1:25:12Chris Ryan?

  Well, he didn't go pro.

• 1:25:13Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:25:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:14Speaker 04

  He's a high school player.

• 1:25:15Bill Simmons?

  Just jumped out to me, looked slow.

• 1:25:16Chris Ryan?

  What if he got his knee blown out in high school?

• 1:25:18Speaker 04

  You know what?

• 1:25:19Bill Simmons?

  We're making excuses for him, he looks slow.

• 1:25:21Speaker 04

  Well, I'm not making any excuses for him, I'm saying respect him, man. This man might have got some shrapnel in Baghdad, or Fallujah, or something like that.

• 1:25:29Bill Simmons?

  Alright, you're Jesus, it's a thought experiment. Turned into like, he's self in the military. Well, the body armor's probably heavy too.

• 1:25:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:25:38Bill Simmons?

  I don't know, I just, I wasn't impressed with Pablo.

• 1:25:42Chris Ryan?

  In terms of jogging with full cap bar and like, yeah.

• 1:25:46Bill Simmons?

  Um, CR, you did this when you initially wrote about this movie for The Ringer. You mapped out going from Montebello to the Federal Reserve Los Angeles branch, all the way down to Alameda Street.

• 1:25:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Alameda Corridor.

• 1:26:00Bill Simmons?

  It's a long time. And it could explain why they were in traffic and ended up getting caught. They put so much time and energy and thought into how to break into this bank, they never factored in the traffic part.

• 1:26:14Chris Ryan?

  Well, they never factored the right lane being closed. And honestly, that's the most quintessentially LA thing that happens in this movie.

• 1:26:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's just Thursday.

• 1:26:21Chris Ryan?

  It's like, "I had fucking plenty of time, and now I'm 40 minutes late because they closed the right lane."

• 1:26:26Speaker 04

  Also, they thought they would be clean, they thought they would be undetected, they thought their plan was gonna be sound. And so, they didn't know that they were up against super cop linebacker Big Nick.

• 1:26:37Bill Simmons?

  Caught him. Any other nitpicks?

• 1:26:39Chris Ryan?

  The only other one that I had was Merriman is super offended by like Big Nick's behavior. But I would not describe Merriman as like really putting an emphasis on his family, you know, like, cause he does

• 1:26:55Chris Ryan?

  basically make his girlfriend sleep with Big Nick to throw like a, put him on a wild goose chase. So, practice what you preach, right?

• 1:27:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:02Chris Ryan?

  That's all I'm saying.

• 1:27:03Bill Simmons?

  Fair.

• 1:27:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:06Speaker 04

  That's fair. I can go along with that.

• 1:27:09Bill Simmons?

  Sequel, prequel, prestige, TV all black cast or untouchable?

• 1:27:12Chris Ryan?

  Sequel.

• 1:27:12Bill Simmons?

  Next category, we were getting a sequel.

• 1:27:14Chris Ryan?

  I would take a prequel.

• 1:27:16Bill Simmons?

  I'd take a prequel and a sequel.

• 1:27:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:18Speaker 04

  A prequel would be a great way to bring Merriman's character back.

• 1:27:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but you have to shrink him a little bit, you know?

• 1:27:24Speaker 04

  Get him smaller.

• 1:27:24Bill Simmons?

  Next category is, is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Sam Jackson? No. Byron Mayo, Harley Mays, Long Legs, or Philip Baker Hall? Do we add Big Nick to this category going forward? What movie is worse with Big Nick?

• 1:27:38Chris Ryan?

  Right? Should we get Philip Baker Hall out and Big Nick in?

• 1:27:41Bill Simmons?

  I'm happy to do that.

• 1:27:42Chris Ryan?

  Okay. Alright.

• 1:27:44Bill Simmons?

  What, what movie would Big Nick not make better? Like rom-coms he'd make better, horror films? Just be coming into a house where there's like an exorcism?

• 1:27:52Chris Ryan?

  Driver was friends with Big Nick in Marriage Story.

• 1:27:56Chris Ryan?

  Just gotta dump him, brother.

• 1:27:58Speaker 04

  If Big Nick was friends with MLK in Selma?

• 1:28:04Speaker 04

  Hey, gotta get across the fucking Edmund Pettus Bridge.

• 1:28:06Chris Ryan?

  Let me tell you something, brother.

• 1:28:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I'm in. So, we'll add Big Nick.

• 1:28:11Chris Ryan?

  Okay. I, I was thinking about what would happen if Wayne Jenkins was Big Nick's divorce attorney?

• 1:28:17Chris Ryan?

  Goddamn Big Nick! I didn't know I was watching Kramer versus Kramer! Don't you, don't you know about having a burner phone for strippers? I hope you had it prenup! You better get a meat eater in here, big dog, or you're gonna be paying alimony a long fucking time!

• 1:28:36Bill Simmons?

  Wayne! He's back.

• 1:28:42Bill Simmons?

  Just one Oscar, who gets it?

• 1:28:45Bill Simmons?

  Should we just say Christian, because he's here?

• 1:28:47Speaker 04

  I would say, you know what looks funny? Like, not to dick rock, but, well, like, I would say script, though. I would, I would say script.

• 1:28:56Bill Simmons?

  Christian still wins.

• 1:28:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm saying script, you, yeah, you're right, I would say script, it's, it's an invented script.

• 1:29:01Chris Ryan?

  If I was gonna go with anybody but Christian, I honestly would go Pablo.

• 1:29:05Bill Simmons?

  I had him, I had him as well.

• 1:29:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:29:08Bill Simmons?

  Probably an answerable questions.

• 1:29:11Bill Simmons?

  Best and worst job for the people driving the armored truck? Worst job is sitting in the back.

• 1:29:18Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:29:19Bill Simmons?

  Inside, because that guy always gets blown up if anything bad happens. I would be like, we're fucking drawing straws to see who's sitting in the back.

• 1:29:26Chris Ryan?

  I'm glad you brought this up, because I wanted to know, what's, what's a medium bad day for an armored truck guy?

• 1:29:33Bill Simmons?

  Me, like, the donut stores closed?

• 1:29:35Chris Ryan?

  Good day is nothing happened, right? Bad day is den of thieves happen, or heat happens, or whatever. What's like, that, we're just going over a lot of potholes?

• 1:29:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:44Chris Ryan?

  Or, the bank was slow getting us out of there, or whatever, like, what's a medium?

• 1:29:47Bill Simmons?

  Didn't get home in time for the football game, because there was a lane closed?

• 1:29:52Speaker 04

  Movies like this make me wonder, like, what kind of people are the armored car people?

• 1:29:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:57Speaker 04

  Because, you know, if I'm driving the car, and the guy goes, "We got armored pairs of clothes, and we about to fuck y'all up if you don't give me the money," I'm like, "Yo."

• 1:30:08Bill Simmons?

  Take it.

• 1:30:08Speaker 04

  Hey, bro, you can add the money.

• 1:30:10Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna go in that donut shop, I don't know, I don't, yeah.

• 1:30:12Speaker 04

  You want some?

• 1:30:13Bill Simmons?

  When I come back.

• 1:30:14Speaker 04

  You wanna glaze? I could throw them out there, but the armored car, in all of these movies, the armored car guys always...

• 1:30:20Chris Ryan?

  It's like, "I'm gonna die doing what I love!" Protecting money in a truck!

• 1:30:25Speaker 04

  And I'm not saying that's whack, I'm just saying, "Yo, who the fuck are these guys, you know what I'm saying?"

• 1:30:30Bill Simmons?

  What other answerables?

• 1:30:32Chris Ryan?

  I, I wanted to know if Ray Mearman was a tribute to Sean Mearman, as a football player? And, uh, how would Van talk his way out of sending that text?

• 1:30:43Speaker 04

  Oh, what?

• 1:30:44Chris Ryan?

  How would you have talked your way out of sending that text?

• 1:30:46Bill Simmons?

  Your big Nick at 6:00 in the morning.

• 1:30:48Speaker 04

  Oh, oh, oh shit, okay, well, look.

• 1:30:52Speaker 04

  Let me see that. Oh, that wasn't me. So look, let me tell what happened. So my homeboy, his phone, we was all there. I was there, I'm not gonna lie. I spent a lot of money. Okay, you probably shouldn't look at the bank statements for a little while, baby. I spent a lot of money. But my phone died. And I'm leaving, and I'm, uh, my man, he, or, excuse me, his phone died. I apologize.

• 1:31:12Bill Simmons?

  Baracho's phone, yeah.

• 1:31:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, his phone died, and he wanted to hook something up, you know, he, you know, he had just got divorced or whatever. He trying to see what's up. So I gave him my phone, and he was texting. I know you're not stupid enough to think that I would text you.

• 1:31:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:26Speaker 04

  How could you think that? How could you think that I would send that? As a matter of fact, stop accusing me. Yeah. Because I've been at work, and I asked for one night a month to go out with my boys. I'm trying to do this nigga a solid. And all of a sudden, you getting at me. I don't wanna hear this no more. Give me the keys. Give me the keys. Gaslit.

• 1:31:51Chris Ryan?

  It would be really funny if you went home and you were just like, oh, Chris Ryan borrowed my phone.

• 1:31:55Speaker 04

  That would be so funny.

• 1:31:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it would be CR.

• 1:31:59Bill Simmons?

  With Donny meets Merriman, that scene when he goes over and they're all like grimly eating barbecue outside. It looks like the Boogie Nights house. Did you notice that?

• 1:32:08Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, outside when they're, I mean, Boogie Nights outside is slightly bigger, but it gives you the same kind of...

• 1:32:13Chris Ryan?

  It feels more like South Bay adjacent to me than the valley, but yeah.

• 1:32:16Bill Simmons?

  Cause there's the pool, when they, when they show the back, it's on the left, but, uh, I researched this, and all of this movie was filmed in Atlanta, basically. So it was not the Boogie Nights house.

• 1:32:24Speaker 04

  You know who we haven't talked about in the movie almost at all?

• 1:32:27Bill Simmons?

  Who?

• 1:32:27Speaker 04

  Fifty. Of all the roles that Fifty has been in, Fifty is, he fits like a glove into this movie.

• 1:32:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. You could actually make the argument that he should have lived. Cause Fifty, then, in Dead of Thieves 2, is like a huge thing, right? After Power and everything.

• 1:32:44Speaker 04

  Like he, like, normally when you see Fifty on screen, he's such a gigantic personality and a gigantic figure that you go, that's Fifty Cent. But in this role, in this role, he's muted, he plays off of Pablo's character really well. He's really, really good in this.

• 1:33:01Bill Simmons?

  I didn't put him in Apex Mountain because it's, it's, we know what his Apex...

• 1:33:05Chris Ryan?

  The Get Rich or Die Trying album, yeah.

• 1:33:07Bill Simmons?

  That, that year, that, when his album broke, was his Apex Mountain.

• 1:33:10Speaker 04

  Biggest rapper in the world, yeah.

• 1:33:11Bill Simmons?

  But this was, I think, the best movie that he's been in.

• 1:33:13Speaker 04

  This is probably his movie apex.

• 1:33:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:16Speaker 04

  This is, I would definitely say this is movie apex.

• 1:33:19Bill Simmons?

  Uh, best double feature choice? What would you go with CR?

• 1:33:23Chris Ryan?

  I mean, Den of Thieves 2, Pantera?

• 1:33:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:25Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 1:33:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:26Speaker 04

  Deliver for client.

• 1:33:30Bill Simmons?

  The Andy Red's a one day award. What happened the next day? Den of Thieves 2.

• 1:33:34Chris Ryan?

  Pantera.

• 1:33:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. What piece of memorabilia would you want from this movie that's not the Chinese food that's stuck in the bathroom?

• 1:33:42Speaker 04

  Oh, man, I get enamored with all the hardware that's always in these movies, but I'm not gonna pick that.

• 1:33:48Bill Simmons?

  Oh, see, I had that. I had Pablo's vest in this movie would be fucking cool.

• 1:33:53Speaker 04

  Always loved the movie.

• 1:33:54Bill Simmons?

  So many bullet spots.

• 1:33:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:56Bill Simmons?

  It's like 2,000 bullets.

• 1:33:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, but it'd probably be one of the donuts with a little bit of blood on it.

• 1:34:02Bill Simmons?

  Stunt donut? What do you have, CR?

• 1:34:04Chris Ryan?

  Either the donuts or Donnie's Trans Am or whatever he was driving when he's like, alright, drive.

• 1:34:11Bill Simmons?

  The Coach Finstak Award, best life lesson. Never underestimate a bartender.

• 1:34:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:15Speaker 04

  Never.

• 1:34:15Chris Ryan?

  That's definitely what I left the film thinking about. Or if you're gonna...

• 1:34:22Bill Simmons?

  If you're gonna pull off a heist, maybe try to figure out a better traffic situation if you're gonna spend

• 1:34:27Chris Ryan?

  Avoid the alley of the corridor.

• 1:34:28Bill Simmons?

  10 weeks casing a bank. Maybe try to figure out how you're getting Alameda.

• 1:34:33Speaker 04

  I have one question I wanna ask before, just to compare some stuff, just real quick. Let's say you have one job you have to pull, and the job is robbing a large bank in Miami, right? Whose crew are you gonna want to rob this bank?

• 1:34:52Bill Simmons?

  Oh, from Movie Cruise.

• 1:34:54Speaker 04

  Movie Cruise. Danny Ocean's crew?

• 1:34:56Bill Simmons?

  Nah, too soft.

• 1:34:57Speaker 04

  Neil's crew?

• 1:34:59Bill Simmons?

  Neil's crew.

• 1:35:00Speaker 04

  Or Merriman's crew?

• 1:35:02Bill Simmons?

  Neil's crew.

• 1:35:03Speaker 04

  You think Neil's crew?

• 1:35:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:05Chris Ryan?

  I feel like...

• 1:35:06Bill Simmons?

  Do I get Dennis Haysbert in Neil's crew?

• 1:35:08Chris Ryan?

  I think that online gambling was probably not kind to Chris Scherless. And by the time you get to our contemporary moment, he is really distracted.

• 1:35:18Bill Simmons?

  Right. That's he too.

• 1:35:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's like him just being crippled by like, I gotta get my bets in, but like...

• 1:35:24Bill Simmons?

  He's doing a Monday night party.

• 1:35:25Chris Ryan?

  So I would go Merriman's crew.

• 1:35:26Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 1:35:27Bill Simmons?

  Interesting. Mayor Mink's Crew has more size.

• 1:35:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:30Bill Simmons?

  Cause Ray's probably, what, five inches taller than anyone? He's five inches on size more.

• 1:35:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. I think if the bank, I think the, because the bank is in Miami, I'm going with Mayor Mink's Crew.

• 1:35:42Bill Simmons?

  I mean, obviously the, the correct answer is the town because you get Jim, who's gonna fucking take all these guys. Five eight pit bull.

• 1:35:49Chris Ryan?

  Those guys get killed on the second robbery.

• 1:35:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, true. Uh, who won the movie?

• 1:35:54Chris Ryan?

  Christian.

• 1:35:56Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, for sure.

• 1:35:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, we took him, it's like shepherded, no, he shepherded it from like the early 2000s up into the screen.

• 1:36:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, fifteen, fifteen years of working on a movie, then all of a sudden it leads to this all these years later.

• 1:36:08Speaker 04

  Can I give you?

• 1:36:08Chris Ryan?

  The rewatchables.

• 1:36:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I meant that in things too, not the rewatchables.

• 1:36:14Speaker 04

  Can I give it?

• 1:36:15Bill Simmons?

  In theaters, January 10th.

• 1:36:16Speaker 04

  There's gonna be a cop out. Is it possible that in this instance, the movie won the movie? And let me tell you why I say that. It's because very rarely is a film thought about so highly by everyone that's seen it. And for some reason, it was unexpected to people, like how much they enjoyed it. Like everybody that talks about it talks about, uh, like, you know, people that said it wasn't great don't know what they're talking about. And the movie itself, it was able to maintain that kinetic energy. And everybody's interested enough to like have a sequel that people are really go out to see. So in this case, maybe the movie won the movie.

• 1:36:56Bill Simmons?

  That's interesting because it so rarely happens that they make a movie that has expectations for just, I hope this movie does okay in the theaters.

• 1:37:04Chris Ryan?

  I'm gonna try this in three weeks where I do the movie won the movie and he's gonna be like, you can't do that.

• 1:37:13Bill Simmons?

  I would say either Christian or Pablo Schreiber, cause this is one of those movies that makes you wonder like, man, should. There have been more stuff for him? Like was there, you know, could there have been an action franchise for him? Or I don't know. I mean, he's had a really good career, done a bunch of things, but could there have been like a signature Hook franchise action thing?

• 1:37:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think Halo.

• 1:37:32Bill Simmons?

  Like could it have been Jack Reacher?

• 1:37:34Speaker 04

  The Halo thing was a gigantic thing.

• 1:37:37Bill Simmons?

  But that's in the nerd verse though, right?

• 1:37:39Speaker 04

  Well, it was on Paramount Plus.

• 1:37:41Bill Simmons?

  That's like your people watch that, the nerds.

• 1:37:44Speaker 04

  My people?

• 1:37:46Bill Simmons?

  The ringer versers.

• 1:37:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, clean it up.

• 1:37:49Bill Simmons?

  I said the nerds.

• 1:37:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Clean it up, Marky Mark.

• 1:37:53Bill Simmons?

  I said the nerds. How dare you? No, but that's in the ringer verse universe.

• 1:38:01Speaker 04

  The ringer verse, yeah. But to your point, that was his big, his big deal.

• 1:38:04Chris Ryan?

  I don't think it does, honestly. It does not need a better sex scene in this movie.

• 1:38:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:11Chris Ryan?

  Did you really want to see Big Nick going at it with the stripper? Ray's girl?

• 1:38:16Bill Simmons?

  No, I don't. I think this movie has the right amount of sex.

• 1:38:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. All right, we're gonna wrap it up. Thank you to Lionsgate and check out Den of Thieves 2, Pantera. All right, that's it for the Den of Thieves re-rewatchables. Don't forget, we're gonna be doing a mailbag at some point this month or next month. So if you want to send a question that you want us to answer, a category idea, whatever, just send it to [email protected]. We will see you. Not sure when next. It could be later this week, it could be next week. Stay tuned.

• 1:39:13Chris Ryan?

  Guess who's joining the club this season? Walmart Plus. Yep, Sam's Club Plus membership now comes with Walmart Plus at no extra cost. Two memberships, one great price. Just 120 bucks a year can save you time and over $700. Want to get in on the membership duo of the century? Visit sam'sclub.com. Come join us. Sam's Club. Annual plan only. Auto renews, T and C apply. Estimate based on average combined Walmart Plus and Sam's Club Plus savings among members of both for one plus year versus non-member or club member pricing/fees. Excludes membership fees. See Walmart Plus terms and Sam's Club terms for more info. When you shop pickup at Kroger, you can expect the savings you love and fresh groceries selected just for you. Our associates are committed to getting every detail right, carefully handpicking your items, checking for quality and freshness, and packing your order with care.

• 1:39:57Chris Ryan?

  Because bringing you fresh, quality groceries is what we do best. And right now, enjoy $20 off your first online order of $75 or more. Restrictions apply. See site for details. Kroger. Fresh for everyone.