STARRING: Denzel Washington, Mark Wahlberg, Paula Patton, Bill Paxton, Edward James Olmos, James Marsden, Robert John Burke, Fred Ward.
WRITTEN BY: Blake Masters
DIRECTED BY: Baltasar Kormakur
Comic book films are all the rage now. Bet you didn’t know that 2 Guns is adapted from a graphic novel. Even with that origin, 2 Guns feels like a directionless retread.
Bobby (Denzel Washington) and Stig (Mark Wahlberg) start off the film as two drug kingpin-wannabees, but as the story moves forward, we learn that Bobby is DEA, and Stig is some kind of Naval Special Forces. They’ve been duped by their superiors into thinking they were in an undercover operation, and rob a bank for 43 million, that is just a CIA slush fund.
Bobby and Stig then have to work through their differences and investigate who set them up, and why, in order to clear their names and survive. Bill Paxton is a CIA operative trying to track down his stolen money. James Marsden is Stig’s superior. Edward James Olmos is a Mexican drug lord. Paula Patton is Bobby’s handler, an also random love interest.
Mark Wahlberg is at his most entertaining here. Wisecracking his way through a rather dull script. Washington is about on the same level as Safe House. I thought Wahlberg stole the movie. Paula Patton was painfully put through a scene where her hair perfectly drapes over her nipples, only to be in another shot where her nipples are shown. James Marsden brings nothing to the film, but Bill Paxton is fun as a semi-psychopathic CIA agent, though he’s never really believable as a CIA operative. More like a badass private eye.
The film can’t decide what it wants to be, as well as having a trailer that reveals a bit too much about the ending. Denzel’s ‘Make It Rain’ should have been left out of the trailer. I can’t help but feel that the movie is predictable, and even the twists don’t really hit the way a real twist should. It’s not a particularly bad film, I just don’t think it offers anything new. It moves pretty quickly once it gets going, but it starts a little slow. I would say, you can see this film, just don’t rush out to see it. I felt the same way about the last Kormakur/Wahlberg production, Contraband.
FINAL GRADE: B-
