2 Guns, released on DVD this month, is a rare example of a successful buddy-movie with two stars, but which doesn't rely on 'stunt' casting...
Robert 'Bobby' Trench (Denzel Washington) and Michael 'Stig' Stigman (Mark Wahlberg) are sitting in a diner and about to rob a bank. We see in flashback the events that led up to this well-orchestrated, if bound-to-end-in-tears venture. It soon becomes apparent that we know more about each of these men than they think they know about each other... because while both men are about to break the law, they're doing it for hidden reasons. Neither man is quite what he appears to be.
Further problems ensue when the haul from the bank is millions more than either of them anticpated. it also becomes clear that the men's respective bosses and colleagues also appear to be separately compromised and corrupted. With a lot of very bad people wanting the very big amount of money, Trench and Stigman are (reluctantly) going to have to work together and REALLY trust each other to stay alive...
Buddy movies are as old a staple of cinematic outings as you can get. For every comedian, there's a straight-man or another comedian, waiting to parlay the dialogue and hit that entertinment factor right back across the Net. Some have been classics - Laurel & Hardy, Butch and Sundance, Bogart and McCall even Clint Eastwood and an Orangutan. But in recent years, the buddy-genre (particularly the buddy-COP movie) has all too often been a vehicle for the exuberant personalities of the cast. Even one of the best of the year's examples The Heat (with Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy) felt absolutely scripted to the formula that their screen personalities were already known for.
Based on the graphic novel of the same name, 2 Guns hardly breaks the beloved formula, quite the opposite, but what it does do is feel less fawning and less over-eager to please. This is a film that is certainly empowered by its casting - both Washington and Wahlberg in fine form - but which could have been made with any number of equally talented actors. It's not 48HRS level hijinks, but frankly, Walter Hill's recent output has hardly reached those heights either - Bullet to the Head often felt like it needed a kick to the butt..
A little over-long, it's not a film that overstays its welcome by much and if the climax is a little chaotic for its own good, then we're still having a fair amount of fun by the time the credits roll. Washington received a lot of praise for his sullen drunk in the Oscar-nominated Flight (massively over-rated and wrongly-marketed in this reviewer's opinion) but he's much more engaging when we get to cheer him on and here the anti-hero banter rolls free without seeming too forced. Wahlberg too is good with comedy and here manages to stay the right side of flippant. There's solid support from Paula Patton, Edward James Olmos, James Marsden, a boo-hiss Bill Paxton and an often under-rated Robert John Burke (last seen recently in Person of Interest). But the film also succeeds because though there are plenty of smiles, it isn't a comedy per se. There are some dark moments among the betrayals, double-crosses and various agendas at work.
Old-school in the good sense of knowing when to boo, when to cheer and when to dismiss gunshots as mere inconvenient flesh-wounds, this is an outing that provides a couple of hours of solid testosterone-fuelled entertainment and which could teach its contemporaries a thing or two about style, pacing and balance. It probably won't rank in most people's top tens of the year, but on the flipside it was one of 2013's nicer suprises when it came to an action genre that was too often dominated by bigger budgets rather than basic quality and originality.
Review score: 9 out of 10
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