2 Guns (15.)
Directed by Baltasar Komakur.
Starring Denzel Washington, Mark Wahlberg, Paula Patton, Bill Paxton, James Marsden and Edward James Olmos. 109 mins.
The title promises two guns but the film delivers considerably more. It might have been better sticking with the lower figure. People moan that modern action films have no stories but the real shame are the ones that have proper plots which are weighted down by over scaled action sequences that are out of all proportion to the tale they are telling.
2 Guns opens with Washington and Wahlberg preparing to rob a sleepy Texas nowhereville bank of $3million belonging to a Mexican drug cartel. Of course things don’t quite go to plan and their scheme goes awry in a sub-Elmore Leonard (but still engaging) trail of double crosses and twists which get interrupted every twenty minutes or so for the characters to take part in minor military engagements.
The film is like a sedimentary cross-section of the last four decades of Hollywood action thriller. At the base is a gritty seventies thriller, something similar to Charlie Varrick, starring a real hard man star supported by a line up a gnarled character actors, a function that Paxton, Olmos and Fred Ward replicate rather well here. On top of that you find layers of mechanical 80s action beats, a buddy comedy central pairing and the odd Tarantino-esque narrative and dialogue flourish.
It is a shame that it didn’t have the faith in audiences just to make a proper, human scaled crime thriller, but as inhuman action comedies go it is more than passable. Washington is always a majestic screen presence and he pairs up well with Wahlberg. He seems to enjoy working with him and you can see Wahlberg is puppy dog keen to impress the big man.
While the central pairing embody the traditional All American values of being indestructible superhuman killing machines who are impervious to pain, the film itself is rabidly Anti-American. The story has Wash & Wahl having to make the hazardous border crossing that thousands of “wetback” immigrants risk to illegally enter the country from Mexico. Most of the supporting cast get a little speech castigating the land of the free. The big plot reveal is, Big Spoiler, that the CIA protect and take a percentage from Mexican drug cartels. If Michael Moore made a film about that he’d be hog-roasted on the White House lawn. Here though it is tossed casually into the mix as if such cynicism is what audiences expect and accept.
Directed by Baltasar Komakur.
Starring Denzel Washington, Mark Wahlberg, Paula Patton, Bill Paxton, James Marsden and Edward James Olmos. 109 mins.
The title promises two guns but the film delivers considerably more. It might have been better sticking with the lower figure. People moan that modern action films have no stories but the real shame are the ones that have proper plots which are weighted down by over scaled action sequences that are out of all proportion to the tale they are telling.
2 Guns opens with Washington and Wahlberg preparing to rob a sleepy Texas nowhereville bank of $3million belonging to a Mexican drug cartel. Of course things don’t quite go to plan and their scheme goes awry in a sub-Elmore Leonard (but still engaging) trail of double crosses and twists which get interrupted every twenty minutes or so for the characters to take part in minor military engagements.
The film is like a sedimentary cross-section of the last four decades of Hollywood action thriller. At the base is a gritty seventies thriller, something similar to Charlie Varrick, starring a real hard man star supported by a line up a gnarled character actors, a function that Paxton, Olmos and Fred Ward replicate rather well here. On top of that you find layers of mechanical 80s action beats, a buddy comedy central pairing and the odd Tarantino-esque narrative and dialogue flourish.
It is a shame that it didn’t have the faith in audiences just to make a proper, human scaled crime thriller, but as inhuman action comedies go it is more than passable. Washington is always a majestic screen presence and he pairs up well with Wahlberg. He seems to enjoy working with him and you can see Wahlberg is puppy dog keen to impress the big man.
While the central pairing embody the traditional All American values of being indestructible superhuman killing machines who are impervious to pain, the film itself is rabidly Anti-American. The story has Wash & Wahl having to make the hazardous border crossing that thousands of “wetback” immigrants risk to illegally enter the country from Mexico. Most of the supporting cast get a little speech castigating the land of the free. The big plot reveal is, Big Spoiler, that the CIA protect and take a percentage from Mexican drug cartels. If Michael Moore made a film about that he’d be hog-roasted on the White House lawn. Here though it is tossed casually into the mix as if such cynicism is what audiences expect and accept.
