An increasingly beefy Gerard Butler rips into his role as a sleazy Los Angeles cop in this effective action heist thriller.

If you’re in the right mood the Scots actor can turn any old nonsense into entertainment, and thankfully his material here is a cut above his previous outing in the all-round disaster movie, Geostorm.

He’s hunting a crew of former marines turned ruthless bank robbers who are led by Pablo Schreiber. They’ve muscled O’Shea Jackson Jr.’s barman into being their getaway driver in a plan to steal $30million from the only LA bank which has never been robbed.

Among the deafening shoot-outs, well staged action and a great deal of toxic machismo, there are conflicted loyalties and muddled morality, with the cops boasting of being worse than the bad guys and the thieves enjoying loving family lives.

There’s no lack of ambition but it fails in comparison with its biggest influence, Michael Mann’s 1995 crime classic, Heat.