And really, none of this should be a surprise as the film teams Wahlberg
back up with Icelandic director Baltasar Kormakur, who brought us the
forgettable Contraband just last year. Kormakur, a genuinely talented
filmmaker everywhere else on the planet, has decided that American action
movies all look like they were hammered out by the cheap clone of Tony Scott.
His directorial fingerprint is so unnoticeable that he only deserves mention by
way of backhanded compliment. 
The combo of Wahlberg and Washington is going to be good for a fun time on
some level though, right? Absolutely, and the film kicks off with wildfire
banter between the two that promises an enjoyable, if familiar crime caper.
Washington is smooth-talkin' Bobby Trench and Wahlberg grins his way through as
Marcus "Stig" Stigman, two drug dealers working their way up the
ladder in a Mexican cartel. A run-in with cartel leader Papi Greco (Edward
James Olmos) involving a decapitated head in a duffel bag and some poor
tortured chickens leads to the guys agreeing to rip off a local bank to steal
his money. But the $3M they were supposed to snag turns into $43M and a ton of
questions, mostly revolving their own true identities. Neither man knows the
other is actually on the side of the law, working for competing organizations,
and they keep this secret for...oh, about ten minutes. The comedic interplay
between the two as they hide their secrets was the film's most inspired
element, and it's casually tossed aside in favor of simplicity.
2 Guns is the sort of film where everybody, whether they be good or
bad, has an ulterior motive, and the plot bends into a pretzel to make sure all
of those motives make some logical sense. It doesn't necessarily work, and the
results are that none of the characters, including the two main ones, come
anywhere close to being interesting. Washington has slipped into playing
essentially two roles for the better part of the last decade. Either he's just
being the cool and suave Denzel we've all just come to expect, or he's mocking
the one time he dared branch out (and won an Oscar for it) as the morally
bankrupt cop in Training Day. He gets a chance to do both here, rockin'
a pair of gold fronts and with a shady demeanor that screams "snake in the
grass". Wahlberg livens up opposite the rock solid Washington, but it's
mostly like he just wandered in off the set of The Other Guys. The film takes
great pains to be a riotous buddy comedy in the vein of those films, but
Washington is dead set against it from the start. He sees 2 Guns as Man
on Fire whereas Wahlberg is thinking Pain & Gain, and never
the two shall meet.
While nobody is truly good in this scumbag fest, there are a few standout
villains who stake their claim for the title. Olmos' Papi Greco is little more
than a Mexican kingpin stereotype, who we see pissing on his own hands before
delivering a beatdown with a baseball bat. Bill Paxton chews up a role as one
of those undefinable government big wigs with a self-serving agenda, and James
Marsden turns his usual All-American charm into raging insincerity with
startling effectiveness. The lovely Paula Patton only shows up it seems to
flash her breasts before getting lost in the plot's many inconsistencies.
Granted, it will likely earn the film an extra point or two but it's
disappointing to see her used so sparingly. 
It's unclear if we're supposed to take the overblown violence and casual
brutality by the "good guys" seriously, or if 2 Guns is simply
late night HBO fodder. A truly odd, overlong sequence where Bobby and Stig are
forced to cross the border with a bunch of illegal immigrants only adds to the
confusion. The scene is notable for how much of a departure it is, and seems to
be some sort of "teachable moment" about the immigrant experience, but
it has no impact on the story in any way. Why was it there? What caused 2
Guns to suddenly turn into El Norte?Good will for Wahlberg and Washington is pretty much all that 2 Guns has going for it, and that runs dry pretty quick. It's a film that will make for perfect background noise, or as the free in-flight movie during your next trip.
