I love big car chases almost as much as I love heist films, and so I got very excited when I read the critical response to Den of Thieves 2: Pantera and found out that the long-in-the-works sequel starring Gerard Butler and O’Shea Jackson Jr. featured both. And the early addition to the 2025 movie schedule didn’t disappoint with its intense robbery scenes, incredible planning sequences, and what has been described as the first electric car chase. Then I found out how director Christian Gudegast made it all happen.
This epic car chase immediately following Butler’s Nick “Big Nick” O’Brien and Jackson’s Donnie Wilson pulling off an impressive heist at the World Diamond Center in Nice, France, has everything you’d want in a scene like this, including a great story about how it all came together. In a recent interview with Variety, Terry Stacey, who worked as a cinematographer on the film, shared how pre-viz work and a pair of Porsche Taycan Turbos were made to look like go-kart helped them pull it off:
It all began with pre-viz work that included storyboarding, scouting roads and having a pod car. Two of the Porsches were changed to look like go-karts, and we had the stunt driver on the roof. The steering wheel, dashboard and even accelerator were relocated to the roof so the stunt driver could control the action. O’Shea and Gerard were in the car with the camera operator in the back.
Okay, the idea of Gerard Butler and O’Shea Jackson Jr. riding around in a state-of-the-art electric Porsche while a stunt driver controls the vehicle from a perch atop its roof sounds so awesome and something from The Fall Guy. I love how this setup not only allowed the actors to focus on bringing this killer scene to life, but also made the whole sequence look even more realistic and epic.
Later in the interview, Stacey explained that the sequence, which took a week to shoot, used some crafty cameras as well as some daring actions to pull off the portion where the Porsche, still being chased by a pair of Audis, comes out of a tunnel high up in the mountains:
We had one camera in the car where the stunt actor has to mime that he’s going off the cliff, and that was tricky. The wide shot was CGI where you see the car going off the cliff, but Christian broke it down when we needed to be with Nick or Donnie, so we had a car and camera on them, mounted, intercut with the bad guys in the Audis.
All of this worked together to create one of the best car chases in recent memory, and something I can’t wait to see Gerard Butler, O’Shea Jackson Jr., and director Christian Gudegast outdo when the teased Den of Thieves 3 eventually comes out.
If you haven’t seen Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, don’t be like me with its predecessor by sleeping on the 2018 crime flick. While the movie isn’t for everyone, there’s so much to love, even outside the electric Porsche chase sequence.
