In 2 Guns, Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg play two characters I would love to have seen in a better movie. They have great chemistry but the story of 2 Guns is such a generic CIA conspiracy, it’s no fun. The action is mediocre too, but if you put these guys in a wild and crazy adventure full of ridiculous action, then you’d have something.
Bobby (Washington) and Stig (Wahlberg) are criminal buddies who rob banks with clever, if not exciting, M.O.s. They light the diner across the street on fire so the cops don’t show up for donuts, and in one case they lock up the cops before robbing the bank. So, it’s clever but not exactly an Ocean’s Eleven caper. Then it turns out the bank had $40 million in drug money and actually Bobby is DEA and Stig is undercover Navy.
The Navy is a bit of a twist but it only means the guys Stig works for are generic corrupt bad guys he has to outsmart. They got him into something he thought was one thing, and even though he’s a wild card he’s going to do the right thing. You know, the usual. The film’s biggest mistake is separating Stig and Bobby after this information comes out. When they’re apart, the film is no fun at all.
The first 20 minutes are gold though, as Bobby and Stig banter, Stig winks at waitresses and they walk away from explosions in slow motion. Wahlberg does the rapid-fire trash talk, which is nothing new, but it’s engaging. Washington does his confident, condescending thing that Jay Pharoah impersonates, and they’re magic together.
It’s a slog when Bobby and Stig are figuring out what the plot actually is. Considering it’s just another CIA conspiracy with a drug cartel, it’s not worth the effort. Even when Bobby and Stig reunite, they’re involved in pretty unspectacular action sequences that seem designed to make mainstream audiences feel safe, like they’re not being subjected to anything too awesome. I mean, two SUVs driving parallel on rough terrain?
Each sequence has one creative badass beat which seems to be the threshold for mainstream audiences. Some of us want to see The Raid but for summer in middle America, just one cool move is enough. So shooting a sniper scope is cool, and sideswiping a hitman with a car is cool, and it’s always nice to see Washington bitch slap a punk. There’s one nice big explosion, but the action is not crazy enough for the plot to be so generic. The climax takes place in a bullpen, which is something new, but the bulls don’t add anything to the confrontation.
There are a lot of great actors in supporting roles: James Marsden as Stig’s commanding officer, Fred Ward as another Navy higher up, Bill Paxton as someone who wants the money I guess, Edward James Olmos as the drug kingpin and Paula Patton as Bobby’s DEA contact. Again, I would like to see them all in a movie that has more fun with the plot and lets the characters loose.
2 Guns did well so maybe there will be more adventures of Bobby and Stig. Maybe in the next movie they’ll be together the whole time. Maybe in the next one they’ll get into a crazy adventure that takes more than generic fisticuffs and car chases to resolve. Probably not though. They’ll probably do another one just like this.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
