Bobby, an undercover DEA agent, and Stig, an undercover Navy Intelligence officer, end up working together to rob a bank that is holding the spoils of a drug dealer’s activities. However, each believes the other to be a common criminal and intends to rip him off once the robbery is complete. When the bank turns out to contain $43 million rather than the paltry $3 million they were expecting, they eventually realise they’ve been set up and eventually join up to argue and fight their way out of a situation where everyone is trying to kill them, while those they stole from will stop at nothing to get their money back.
Action films starring a mismatched duo of bickering antiheroes are nothing new, but what had the potential to be another generic example is raised beyond the average by the performances of its leads. Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg are both actors as charismatic as they are versatile, and the self-assured swagger of their performances keeps you rooting for them, even though they end up fighting as much with each other as they do with those they’re up against.
While scriptwriter Blake Masters doesn’t quite prove himself a natural successor to Shane Black, the quipping bandied back and forth makes for entertaining viewing as allies become enemies, double-crosses become triple-crosses and the number people taking shots to the crotch painfully increases.
Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur is certainly a name on the rise. His previous movie, true story survival tale The Deep, was shortlisted for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar and this, his second Hollywood movie after last year’s Contraband (itself a remake of Reykjavík-Rotterdam, in which he played the lead), shows he has a talent for delivering quality entertainment from middle ground material.
The plot, such as it is, is principally driven by attempts to retrieve the money by the trio of antagonists: James Marsden’s corrupt Navy officer, Edward James Olmos’ Mexican drug baron and Bill Paxton’s seedy government agent, who has a favoured interrogation method utilising a variation of Russian Roulette that he takes great delight in explaining to those it’s about to be used on. Despite the convoluted events, the signposting of the plot twists is about as subtle as a sledgehammer and you’ll see them coming a mile off as the nonsensical story leaps from one set piece to the next.
2 Guns is certainly no masterpiece of action filmmaking, but once you lose yourself in the quick-fire insults and brazen nonsense of its unapologetically ridiculous plot, you’ll be hard pressed to concern yourself with the fact.
Overall Verdict: A definite case of style over substance, but when the film in question is this stylish it barely even matters.
Special Features:
Click Click, Bang Bang: Making of
The Good, the Bad and the Sexy
Finding the Vibe
Living Dangerously
Deleted Scenes
Commentary with Baltasar Kormákur and Adam Siegel
Reviewer: Andrew Marshall