2 Guns

2 Guns (2013) is about two men robbing a cartel's money, and both are undercover without knowing it about the other. Bobby and Stig work together. Bobby is with the drug enforcement agency and Stig with naval intelligence. Each believes the other is genuinely a criminal and each is reporting to his own service. The robbery goes wrong: instead of the three million they expected there is forty three million in the bank, and it does not belong to the cartel. From that moment both are burned by their own agencies and left alone. The idea is mutual exposure. They learn the truth at the same moment and have to decide whether to trust each other after it. It is adapted from Steven Grant's comic. It is the only film Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg made together. Their rhythm works and carries the film; the plot comes second. Baltasar Kormákur directed; he is Icelandic and this was his second film with Wahlberg. The character Bill Paxton plays is the most menacing figure in it, and the Russian roulette scene is the best passage. The humour is dry and constant; the film does not take itself as a thriller. The shootout at the end is deliberately old fashioned: open ground, long range, a lot of dust. It runs 109 minutes. Good for: action comedy, buddy films, and comic adaptations. Less good for: the plot is convoluted and the violence is harsh.