Den Of Thieves

It is common for Hollywood to insert local Los Angeles scenes, landmarks and various other references to the local region in their projects. It was always the other side of Los Angeles, though. The side that was never a part of my Los Angeles existence.. minus the occasional gangster/ghetto flick set in Compton/South Central.
As a matter of fact, the 'local' news networks never covered anything that was local to me. We basically didn't much exist.
Out of sight, out mind, as they say.

And that is basically how the people at the business end of Los Angeles' wealth and glitter scene viewed  anything south of the wretched Imperial Highway Corridor. In actuality, once you survive passing through that corridor, things get a little cleaner... and much cleaner as you pass further toward the Palos Verdes Peninsula, with it's 2-3 million dollar homes.

The Imperial Highway Corridor intersects with what is known as the Harbor Gateway Corridor, along I-110 (known as The Harbor Freeway), ending at the Port of Los Angeles.

The region trapped against the coast by these two corridors of suckage is called The South Bay. It's a different scene, a different mix of cultures, creating a separate identity due it's cultural isolation from what most people think of as Los Angeles. Part of The South Bay also includes a few localities more culturally and politically associated with what is called South Los Angeles. The communities of South Los Angeles contain a lot of suckage.
It is in this world where I grew up, in the City of Gardena, that straddled the  nicer South Bay and less so, Harbor Gateway to the east and Imperial Corridor to the north.
On the map to the right >>> My home was located where the 'n' and the 'a' meet in 'Gardena'. (Clicking on the map makes it bigger.)

Needless to say, I, like most from Gardena, preferred to look westward when it came time to leave the house. I spent most of my life after age 15 (when I acquired motorized transportation) in the land that lay west. (you would have, also).

Never have I seen a movie that was scripted, set, and filmed almost entirely in the isolated land that I had spent the first half of my life stomping through. And this is where Den Of Thieves got my attention, in the very first scene, showing the Gardena Memorial Hospital and the Hustler Casino... both of which are 4-5 blocks from my childhood home, that my mom still occupies.

Enough background... on to the film...
Gerard Butler plays Detective Nick o'brian, who leads of rough and tough crew of street detectives monitoring a crew of well-organised and clever thieves who have been robbing banks.
They set their sights on a grand prize, the local Federal Reserve... the bank to the banks.

Several of the plot twists along the way, as some of the characters are developed, might leave one scratching their head... but all come together toward the end, as the thieves and detectives attempt to outwit each other, ending in a shootout worthy of  "Heat" while stuck in that all-to-familiar South bay phenomenom: a traffic jam where you least expect it!

Props to the creator of this film, Christian Gudegast, for making this so real. All the references to the local scene are here, from South Bay only slang terms, tattoo styles, the mix of ethnics (yes, Samoans are a real presence here), a vague reference (simply 'Harbor') to the county hospital/trauma center (where you go after you been shot), even a remark about the ethnic make-up of a high school football team vs another (from a school where I had a lot of friends from).

Go see it. It's a good movie.