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| Review: '2 Guns' |
It's where lesser summer
movies are cast off and buried in a landfill of indifference. But it can
also be a month of unexpected gems.
With the orgy of
superhero tentpoles and shock-and-awe action spectaculars now safely
behind us, we can finally turn the page, take a deep breath, and -- if
we're lucky -- be pleasantly surprised.
I don't know if any movie
starring two marquee heavyweights as consistently dependable as Denzel
Washington and Mark Wahlberg can technically qualify as an
under-the-radar stealth attack, but their new buddy crime caper, "2
Guns," caught me completely off guard in all the right ways.
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Washington and Wahlberg,
two actors who can take themselves a bit too seriously at times, cut
loose and seem to be having a blast swapping below-the-belt insults as a
pair of undercover agents posing as drug dealers. Their assignment: Nab
a south-of-the-border cocaine kingpin played by Edward James Olmos.
The catch: Each is working for a different government agency and thinks his partner is a real-deal trafficker.
Washington plays Bobby
Trench, a deep-cover DEA agent decked out with blingy gold incisors, a
salt-and-pepper goatee and an interchangeable array of ring-a-ding-ding
Rat Pack hats. Wahlberg is Marcus ''Stig'' Stigman, a Navy Intelligence
officer with a winking, cool-cat cockiness and a knack for cracking wise
at exactly the wrong time.
After a series of double
crosses, the guys — each still trying to stick to his cover story as a
criminal — plot to knock over a sleepy New Mexico bank. But the vault
holds way more cash than it should. Without giving away too many of the
film's byzantine plot twists, let's just say they soon figure out that
neither one is who he says he is. So they're forced to team up (for real
this time) to find out who framed them and why.
Back and forth they go
across the U.S.-Mexico border, squaring off with their bureaucratic
superiors (Paula Patton and James Marsden), Olmos' posse of seedy
henchmen, and, best of all, Bill Paxton as a beady-eyed,
bolo-tie-wearing sadist.
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Goosed along by a pulpy
Elmore Leonard vibe, "2 Guns" is essentially a B-movie classed up by its
two A-list stars. Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur, who previously
put Wahlberg through his underworld paces in last year's "Contraband,"
seems to be out to turn "2 Guns" into a sort of throwback to the
sin-soaked Southwest noirs.
