Note: The rest of this interview contains spoilers for Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, so proceed accordingly.

I'd love to hear more about Big Nick's arc, specifically. There's a nice reveal that happens at the end with Nick turning these people into the police, but he's at such a low point that it feels believable that he actually could have legitimately flipped. So tell me about the change you wanted the audience to experience with this character in this film versus what we saw in the first one.

So that's, again, talking about what we just discussed. Like where is Nick in his life when he goes on this trip? Maybe he went there with one intention: “I'm going to put Dhoni down. This mother pissed me off. And then he gets there and meets the local law enforcement guys, he doesn't get along with them. They treat him like s***. And he's in a strange place, and then suddenly he sees someone he knows, even though it's Donnie, it's a familiar face. It's like you travel somewhere in the world and you see someone (and you) and you're like, “Oh my God, what's a man?” and there's an instant connection, and he's experiencing all these emotions. It's like a roller coaster, this constant up and down. We wanted to play with that throughout the film to feel which way will it go? and to understand the journey, the emotional roller coaster, that he is on.

But at the end of the day, it's like, 'Man, I'm a cop. I can't do this.' But at the same time, he says, "This is pretty fun." And the technical advisor and consultant, my friend who worked with us on Day 1, Jay, we talked to him a lot about Nick's character on Day 2. And Jay was an undercover cop for years and years, and there's that push, right? You go into a world and you're all gung ho and rah-rah, and "I'm going to take these guys down," and then you meet them and you actually kind of like them. And then by the time it's time to tear them down, you feel like s***. They will almost become his surrogate family. Now he's ruining it. It's like, “My family life at home is screwed up. "Now I have this new family and now I'm tearing them down too." And he feels terrible. It's like, "Who am I? What am I doing?" It's a bit of an identity crisis.

There are so many great heist movies that use that. I think of Point Break, and so do the Fast and Furious movies. So in terms of movie references, there are obviously a million heist movies out there. So, did you watch any of those who were preparing for this, or aspects that you wanted to pay homage to, or things that you knew no want to do?

I've seen 10 minutes of the first Fast and Furious and haven't seen any of the others. None of them. Indeed, "Ronin" was a big influence. Gomorrah, Subura, and then a lot of the old French New Wave like Melville and Le Cercle Rouge and Rififi and Borsalino and all those great movies. I mean, I watched most of the old school classics. A lot of new stuff I haven't seen that much, to be honest. But that's really what it's about, you do research, you go out into the world and you do your own thing. You try to be unique and original for yourself. You're not really trying to ... I mean, obviously as artists, we all have influences, of course, but there wasn't anything really specific that we were looking for (in homage). More energy and atmosphere of certain films. Ronin was a big, again, American character in Europe and kind of a fusion between American and European cinema, right? But there was no specific homage, no.

Were you ever worried at any point, since it had been a few years since the first movie, that another modern heist movie would come along and have a very similar plot point or something. Do you ever worry about that at all as a director?

I mean, you always kind of do, you know what I mean? I've had things in the past as a writer where you write a script, a spec, and it's great, and then suddenly you realize it's coming out very, very similar. I had that a year ago, I was working on a project called The Company, and then when we were about to set it up and shoot it, that movie The Recruit came out with Colin Farrell and Al Pacino. And honestly, it was essentially the same movie. So that killed our movie. They beat us for a few months. So yeah, of course you kind of think about it, but you just have to put your best foot forward, do your thing and hope for the best, right?