2 GUNS works very hard to keep you guessing about who and what its characters really are and what’s really going on. It’s a shame, really, because all that effort in keeping the audience confused along with too little action or real characterization results in a utterly forgettable film, despite the best scene-chewing efforts of its A-List cast.
Bobby Beans (Denzel Washington) and Marcus “Stig” Stigman (Mark Wahlberg) are two crooks who know their trade just as well as they know how to get on each other’s nerves. Stig likes to wink at every girl the pair meet, which bugs the hell out of Bobby. Bobby, on the other hand, makes it clear that the two aren’t friends or even partners, and that there’s no such thing as loyalty or code between men of their ilk, which bugs the hell out of Stig. The only thing they can agree on is how to carry out a crime, and early in the film we see the two work together to try to rip off their druglord boss, Papi Greco (Edward James Olmos), by robbing the bank where he keeps his profits.
Here’s where things start to get complicated. Bobby and Stig go into the bank expecting to find about $3 million in cash. Instead, they find just over $40 million, far more than Papi Greco or the whole dusty Cali-Mexican border town is capable of depositing.
Whose money is it? Well, it wouldn’t matter much if Bobby and Stig were really just career criminals. But nothing in 2 GUNS is what it seems. Bobby Beans is really Bobby Trench, veteran undercover DEA Agent. Stig really is Marcus Stigman, but he’s also U.S. Naval Intelligence. Both were working on breaking Papi Greco’s operation. Both have no idea of the other’s true intentions or loyalties. And both men have no idea that the people that are in the know about their respective ops are about to leave them high and dry in order to relieve them of the cash, regardless of to whom it really belongs.
There so much in this film in terms of casting that you might expect would make it enjoyable at the very least as a comedy, if not a blockbuster action film. You have two charismatic leads in Washington and Wahlberg who sell the action and banter well with one another in the scenes when bullets aren’t flying and cars aren’t exploding. There’s Edward James Olmos in a rare feature film role, playing about as against type as we’ve ever seen him play on the big screen. There’s Paula Patton (Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol) looking stunning and holding her own presence-wise as Bobby’s DEA colleague and on-again, off-again paramour. And there’s Bill Paxton, rocking a cowboy hat, ‘stache, and bolo tie and looking in every frame like he’s having a grand old time, delivering his lines as the heavy in a Texas drawl so over-the-top that you’d think cheese should be leaking from his pores. The script, by veteran TV series writer Blake Masters and based on the BOOM! Studios graphic novel series by Steven Grant, gives all these talented performers something to do with their characters, and they make the most of it.
The problem lies entirely in pacing. At 109 minutes, this film should not feel long, and yet it does. Director Baltasar Kormákur, who previously worked with Wahlberg on Contraband, simply doesn’t tell the story on screen with enough urgency or zip to maintain any dramatic tension. Whereas so many mediocre action films and action comedies these days suffer from too much action and rushing through dialogue and plot development in order to get to the next set piece, 2 GUNS has the exact problem: there’s not enough going on, action or comedy-wise, to keep the proceedings from dragging. Now, one might justify a slower pace if it was for the sake of character development, but there’s not a whole lot of that be found here, either. Bobby and Stig are pretty much the same guys at the end of the film that they were at the start. They just have a lot fewer friends and contacts still among the land of the living.
it’s got a few laughs here and there, and when the action does happen, it’s occasionally fun, but for the most part, 2 GUNS comes to theaters this weekend shooting blanks. No need to see this one in the theater, folks. It will make a good RedBox rental when there’s nothing else to watch on a rainy day.
Score: 2.5 out of 5
2 Guns
Starring Denzel Washington, Mark Wahlberg, Paula Patton, Bill Paxton, James Marsden, Fred Ward, and Edward James Olmos. Directed by Baltasar Kormákur.
Running Time: 109 minutes
Rated R for violence throughout, language and brief nudity.