I’m not sure why but Denzel Washington with a gun has never really hooked me quite right despite the plethora of movies he’s made that feature just such a thing (and even won an Oscar for). He’s an actor that has always made better use of his voice as a weapon for change than poppin’ baddies with an array of fancy firearms. Still, he’s so darned entertaining to watch, it’s often an easy pass just to get to the parts where he does talk rather than shoot. So it is with 2013’s 2 Guns with co-star Mark Wahlberg, a story of two guys who aren’t what they seem to be wrapped up in a mess of money, drugs, cartel lords, government heavies, a shhhhhexy lady, and plenty of whacky banter.
Washington is Robert “Bobby” Beans, a toughie with a criminal past partnered with Michael “Stig” Stigman (Wahlberg), who attempt to cross the US-Mexican border after a deal has gone sour with cocaine kingpin Manny “Papi” Greco (Edward James Olmos). They’re stopped and hauled in by US agents and that’s when we find out – to no surprise – that Beans is actually an undercover DEA agent gasp and has failed to get the evidence needed to nab Papi. Against orders, Beans decides to stay in character and use Stigman to acquire the cash and nail Papi, relying on his ex lover Deb Rees (Paula Patton) to make further connections. It’s here where we discover that Stigman is also not who he appears to be, working undercover as a Navy SEAL for the Office of Naval Intelligence, his superior LCDR Harold Quince (James Marsden) trying to secure the $3 million in cash to fund secret operations. To do so, he instructs Stig to kill Beans and get the money himself. Meanwhile, at the top of the food chain is Earl (Bill Paxton), a malicious sort of fellow who also wants the money and is, as you can guess, not who we think he is. No matter title of this flick, you gotta know, there’s a whole heckuva lot more than just two guns shootin’ about.
Adapted from the comic of the same name by Steven Grant and Mateus Santolouco, this Baltasar Kormákur-directed film is a well-made action flick with a packed story and several satisfying sequences that keep it more than entertaining enough for a sit-through with the chemistry between Washington and Wahlberg the centerpiece. Sure, this sort of back-and-forth with characters like this is hardly anything new and there’s nothing about any of it that is the least bit challenging, but there’s a dedication to the complexity of it all that keeps it on track for most of the runtime. The story sort of plays with the timeline here and there, setting up one thing and connecting it again later to something else, and that all works fine, but I do have to admit that it all lacked any kind of consequence as we know from frame one that no matter how rough it will get for Beans and Stigman, nothing truly bad is going to happen to them.
Okay, yes, a few major “good” characters involved in all this do meet their end, but certainly not unexpectedly, the story telegraphing their fates fairly early on, serving only as fodder to hoist up the menace of Earl and provide that gut-punch motivation our heroes need to get the job done. However, it’s all done with surgical precision, firmly affixed to the steel bound tracks that keeps such stories running straight and narrow. And, with fun performances from the leads and a scenery chewing Paxton providing all the right levels of stickiness to the plot, it’s easy to stay onboard.
That’s sort of also the general problem with it all, too though, the movie a standard shoot ’em up with invincible good guys that never really make you feel all that connected to the potential violence and corruption. Some seriously bad things happen to important people but it’s so sterile and obvious that it’s hard to get worked up over their suffering. For instance, there’s a moment when Beans and Stigman are hung upside down in a cattle barn with an angry bull and his pointy horns that should have been terrifying to the point of avert yours eyes-ness, but is almost comical in delivery. That might have been the point I guess, but it’s a moment like that in which we should have felt some vulnerability among these two men, though the moment just before that, while still hanging and taking beatings with baseball bats that had zero physical effects on either of them should had been the first clue that this is a fantasy. Broken ribs anyone?
I’m not complaining about things like that in a movie called 2 Guns but I know that if I had felt just a little more humanity from these guys instead of the tired cliché of wise-cracking heroes who always get it right, maybe this could have been a bit more rewarding. Either way, there’s still plenty in all this that entertains for what it is, with Patton always great to see in action, a surprise cameo from Fred Ward, and solid stunts that try to mix in a bunch of explody shooting action without all the textbook rock ’em sock ’em choreography you might expect. As a generic out of the box thriller, this does exactly what it intends with a good style and a little grit, making the odd combination of Washington and Wahlberg (who seems to thrive in finding movies with odd combinations) work pretty well. I really liked the last act especially as it abandoned most of its logic at a Navy base and a standoff at Papi’s farm. I mean if you’re gonna get silly, might as well go all in.