Paula Patton is cast in a seemingly intelligent female role, but is ultimately there for her sex appeal. It's nice to see them but they have too little time to truly shine. James Marsden and Edward James Olmos seem overqualified for these supporting roles. After seeing his facetious performance in this film, it's easy now to imagine Mark Wahlberg taking over the role of Tony Stark in future Marvel films. Watching Walhberg and Washington rapidly throw zingers back and forth alone made the price of admission. The two lead actors create a believable long-time friendship and it gave the movie a sizzling charm that you just can't look away from. What elevated 2 Guns from standard action fare were exactly the snappy lines and the buddy dynamic between Washington and Wahlberg. With its setup and buddy dynamic, at times it actually reminded me of the 1996 Adam Sandler and Damon Wayons buddy cop movie Bulletproof. Unlike a lot of recent throwback 80's action films, it tastefully retains much of the fun factor by concentrating on character and dialogue and removing some of the modern tropes that have gone stale, like overloading the film with pop culture references. I highly recommend 2 Guns.2 Guns is reminiscent of buddy cop movies in the late eighties and nineties. The sole exception may be the Navy fellows, who come across as cardboard-like and ambivalent at best (which was the reason I knocked one star out of an otherwise five-star action comedy.) There are goring bulls, drug smuggling operations, dirty money, sex, shootings, corrupt policemen, betrayals and winks enough to last you for the rest of your summer. Their chemistry is sparkling and contagious, and carries the movie unencumbered by plot plausibility concerns through a story with more double-crosses than a cemetery in Tijuana, and more laughs than a Comedy Central special, until it reaches its climax inside the ranch of a drug dealer, with the mother of all Mexican stand-offs between four parties, all pointing guns at each other.įor a movie that begs not to be taken seriously, the production values are pretty high and the movie - although formulaic at many inflection points – avoids caricaturing its characters. The combination of Denzel and Mark works as a charm: Denzel as the alpha-male, and Mark as his willing sidekick. Except here we have, instead of a single pseudo-hero, two full-blown heroes. The premise of this ‘action-driven comedy’ may have undertones reminiscent of Training Day, but both in tone and execution it is much closer to the hilarious and violent Get the Gringo, Mel Gibson’s post-meltdown redemption movie. They find out that they are safer and more effective if they run for their lives together, as a team, and their partnership (‘bromance’ is a better word) is born. After robbing a bank, as part of their respective operations, things start to go wrong, and our heroes have to run for their lives. The movie revolves around Bobby Trench, a seasoned DEA agent (played by Denzel Washington), and Marcus Stigman, a young and fresh-faced Navy intelligence agent (played by Mark Walberg) who overtly are a pair of crooks, yet unbeknownst to each other, are actually government agents, each conducting a separate undercover operation, without the knowledge and likely at the expense of the other. 2 Guns is a blast! It’s so honestly funny and packed with good, old action that I’d pay to see it again. So I quickly adapted my expectations accordingly, and I am happy to report that I had more fun watching it than any other movie I’ve seen in a long time. Starring Denzel Washington, Mark Wahlberg, and Paula PattonĮven though its A-list cast of Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg made me anticipate something along the lines of Man on Fire or Three Kings, it was clear five minutes into 2 Guns that, even though it would have lots of action and a maybe a pinch of drama, this movie was - plain and simple - a laugh-out loud comedy. DEA agents Bobby Trench (Denzel Washington) and Deb Rees (Paula Patton) in 2 Guns.
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