Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg (Patti Perret/Universal)“There is no code.” Near the end of 2 Guns, DEA agent Bobby Trench (Denzel Washington, in and out of grillz) lays out the movie’s theme for Naval intelligence officer Michael Stigman (Mark Wahlberg). Can there be honor among thieves? Will you care?
The filmmakers would say “yes” on both counts. The answer is closer to “sort of.” Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur (101 Reykjavik) and screenwriter Blake Matthews get a competent action movie out of the graphic novel by Steven Grant. The film paints a world of Mexican drug cartels and misguided government allegiances with visuals that aren’t inspiring but are at least coherent, which puts it ahead of most contemporary action movies. And under the pop machismo and gunplay are time-worn themes of trust — in authorities and in your fellow man.
2 Guns is a minor variation on the interracial buddy comedy, where we’re never sure who’s on the right side of the law. We meet the titular guns at a small-town Texas diner as they plot to rob the bank across the street. You might be thinking, “Yeah, another heist movie.” But the nature of the heist, and the wary friendship of the men who pull it off, goes beyond the scope of a small-town bank.
What begins as a movie about outlaws becomes a movie about law enforcement handled and botched by feds and the military. It turns out that both Trench and Stigman are working undercover in a bad case of the left hand not knowing what the right gun is doing. Machismo gives way to paranoia. The two guns are hired hands who lose faith in the organizations that hired them and are left with no choice but to trust each other.
The plot takes a few acts to gain traction, but the tension finally builds in a scene that lays out the movie’s theme. In a riff out of Rear Window, Trench shows up at Stigman’s apartment while Stig keeps an eye out (and a rifle, steadily aimed at the intruder) from a rooftop across the way.
Bill Paxton (Patti Perret/Universal)It’s kind of an action movie Cornell Box. Stig can see Trench, framed by windowpanes and the scope of his rifle. We take cell phones for granted, but it’s a set-up that couldn’t have happened in an action movie twenty years ago: Stig calls up his would-be buddy and partner, which launches a cat and mouse act that shifts when a group of gunmen arrive intending to kill Stigman but all too ready to kill Trench. He who has no choice but to trust Stig’s phoned-in escape instructions. There may be no code in a lawless environment, but there has to be honor among humans, or else nobody would achieve their target. Which in this case happens to be $43.125 million.
Trust is a good message for the kids, but money is an even better message. Somewhere in 2 Guns is an indictment of immigration policies and the drug war, but any radical ideas are overshadowed by filthy lucre.
Still, I have to give props for basic competence. Washington and Wahlberg can play these characters in their sleep, and Edward James Olmos has the right wizened gravitas to play a Mexican drug kingpin. But the most vivid performance here goes to Bill Paxton as Earl, whose affiliation is left deliberately unclear for most of the film. 2 Guns can’t hold a candle to Johnnie To’s excellent Drug War, which plays on similar themes of trust and identity with a more inventive script, more developed characters, and the kind of brutal, well-choreographed shootouts that Hong Kong directors do best. I’ll let you know if it turns up in D.C.
—
Directed by Baltasar Kormákur
Written by Blake Matthews, based on the graphic novel by Steven Grant
With Denzel Washington, Mark Wahlberg, Paula Patton, Edward James Olmos, Bill Paxton.
Rated R for violence throughout and two good guys trying to be bad boys
Running time 109 minutes
Opens today at a multiplex near you
