You ever heard the saying, “Don’t rob the bank across from the diner that has the best donuts in three counties”?

2 Guns

(2013)

(SPOILERS) Denzel Washington is such a reliable performer, that it can get a bit boring. You end up knowing every gesture or inflection in advance, whether he’s playing a good guy or a bad guy. And his films are generally at least half decent, so you end up seeing them. Even in Flight (or perhaps especially in Flight; just watch him chugging down that vodka) where he’s giving it his Oscar-nominatable best, he seems too familiar. I think it may be because he’s an actor who is more effective the less he does. In 2 Guns he’s not doing less, but sometimes it seems like it. That’s because the last person I’d ever expect blows him off the screen; Mark Wahlberg.

It doesn’t compute, really. Wahlberg can be pretty forgettable if he’s cast against his strengths; put him in a Max Payne or We Own the Night (or The Italian Job or Shooter or Contraband – even though those are mildly agreeable diversions) and he barely leaves an impression. He fares even less well without the support of an action template; look at The Lovely Bones or The Happening. But ask him to play dumb, or stick him in a comedy, or just make him goofy, and he comes alive. He’s great in The Departed, a hoot in The Other Guys and is by far the best thing about Ted. But I didn’t expect him to knock it out of the park here. He’s reteaming with his Contraband director Baltasar Kormákur, not obviously a recipe for chuckles. And Denzel tends to make short work of his younger co-stars (see also Unstoppable and Safe House).

But it’s Washington who’s left looking a bit tired; we’ve seen him do this too many times lately. The smartest guy, hip to the game, acting all tough but you know that he’s a nice family guy underneath (I even had this problem slightly with Training Day); for all his bag of tricks he doesn’t really disappear into his roles. The result is that Wahlberg seems more natural. He’s playing an excited kid, eager to be pals with Denzel. While they both get good dialogue, it’s Marky Mark’s that really takes off; a succession of dumb-smart quips and unmannered innocence. Nevertheless, the pair has strong chemistry; even though the camaraderie is trying to a bit too hard in places.

The twosome are play a couple of undercover guys, neither of whom realised the other was undercover. Wahlberg’s Stig is working for Naval Intelligence, Washington’s Bobby for DEA. Ostensibly to bring down drug baron Papi Greco. They rob a Mexican bank, only to end up with (a lot) more loot than they were counting on. And then they find themselves double-crossed. And then they find out each other’s identity. And then Wahlberg shoots Washington.

This is Blake Masters’ first produced movie script, based on Steve Grant’s graphic novel, and it’s clearly indebted to the profane, ultra-violent, densely plotted work of Shane Black (so much so that there’s even a somewhat suspect depiction of female characters – or in this case character). As mentioned, Masters is at times straining for the quick-fire buddy banter. To that extent, it’s not a complete success; there’s a nagging feeling that this is derivative of something better, content with an obvious line when he knows he could do better. Kormàkur’s direction is perfectly serviceable when it comes to the action, but he isn’t a particularly witty director (on this evidence). But it hits more than it misses, and the laughs that come thick and fast are entirely down to the performers (well, and the script). During the early stages, the movie struggles to hit a groove; the lines are there, the actors are heating their beats, but the director isn’t quite enabling it all.

That may be because there’s a slight floundering generally until the duo’s identities are exposed. They’re playing parts, but you don’t know how much, and Kormàkur (maybe it was there from the start, but it feels like an adjustment for little dramatic reason) throws in a flashback in the opening five minutes that pays off after 20; it’s never clear why it was necessary, other than to mix things up a bit.

Nevertheless, as a storyline this is both consistently ridiculous and intriguing; it holds the attention with its disparate strands until the finale. And, when the climax arrives, the results don’t disappoint. There’s a conspiracy involved, and it’s always a pleasure to see the US government agencies, or the military, or both, depicted as fundamentally crooked (because, like, they are; right?) There’s a sop presented, as an attempt to balance it out for the average Joe (“You fight for the guy that’s fighting next to you”) who serves his country, but it’s pat and contrived. As if, amidst all this cynicism, someone thought they’d better throw in something aspirational.

This is, after all, a movie where one of the heroes suggests waterboarding as his next move in an interrogation and we’re presumably supposed to think it’s a good thing (actually, I’m not sure we are; the script is so self-consciously smart aleck that any apparent position may just be contrary for the sake of it). Maybe Wahlberg felt a little guilty about it all (he is a committed Christian, after all); his next picture is a slice of gung ho jingoism from starch patriot and all round War on Terror proponent Peter Berg. We can only hope it’s fractionally as good as Battleshit. Denzel, meanwhile, has remade The Equalizer. One wonders if it will play up the vigilantism or turn out more like a one-man A-Team. Certainly, the actor has been enjoying a spate of low calorie anti-hero roles in the last couple of years; they’ve been consistently well made, but none of them have attained greatness. 2 Guns might be the best of this run, but it’s a movie you know you’ve seen before.

The picture has an expectedly flippant attitude to receiving and inflicting violence; everything is exaggerated and OTT - this is the other aspect that most reminds me of Shane Black’s work. When our heroes are imperilled, they are more likely to insult their abusers than kowtow to them. Kormàkur’s eye for action is a keen one; he keeps the pace up and renders his spatial geometry coherent (always something to be celebrated in an age where shaking a camera is the go-to technique for any action sequence). The sharpshooting scene at Stig’s apartment is particularly effective, but the director’s work as a whole is confident enough that there’s little to single out. But I must mention that, as a keen observer of chicken carnage, this movie reaches a nadir of wanton devastation. The CGI chicken wrangler must have had his work cut out for him.

The guest cast are mostly very good, although Paula Patton’s poker face is abysmal, and Kormàkur singularly fails to limit the tells in this regard. It’s a consistent problem in murder mysteries where the cast of characters is very limited, that you are reduced to one or two suspects so the reveal isn’t really surprising (Sea of Love, anyone?) So too with double-cross plots. Edward James Olmos Paxton is having a ball as the cartel boss, one with a penchant for urinating over his own hands. Fred Ward makes a welcome appearance (it’s not as if he’s stopped working, but his profile has been disappointingly low of late).

James Marsden is the weak link as Wahlberg’s superior; you need someone of equal presence to his co-stars, but Marsden only succeeds in getting worked up into a frightfully bad mood. He behaves more like a temperamental teenager than a naval officer. Pick of the supporting players is Bill Paxton, oozing malevolence and gifted with lines almost as funny as Wahlberg’s. It’s a treat to watch him, and he’s another actor who hasn’t been seen nearly enough on the big screen lately.

In a summer where spectacle has dictated content to repeatedly disappointing pay-offs, 2 Guns bucks the trend. It may be a little too reminiscent of the action movies of yesteryear, but it is also funny, well-staged and moves at a sufficient clip for you not to catch up with where its headed. Boring title, though.

***1/2

You were this amazing occidental samurai.

Ricochet (1991) (SPOILERS) You have to wonder at Denzel Washington’s agent at this point in the actor’s career. He’d recently won his first Oscar for Glory , yet followed it with less-than-glorious heart-transplant ghost comedy Heart Condition (Bob Hoskins’ racist cop receives Washington’s dead lawyer’s ticker; a recipe for hijinks!) Not long after, he dipped his tentative toe in the action arena with this Joel Silver production; Denzel has made his share of action fare since, of course, most of it serviceable if unremarkable, but none of it comes near to delivering the schlocky excesses of Ricochet , a movie at once ingenious and risible in its plot permutations, performances and production profligacy.

The Krishna died of a broken finger? I mean, is that a homicide?

Miami Blues (1990) (SPOILERS) If the ‘90s crime movie formally set out its stall in 1992 with Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs , another movie very quietly got in there first at the beginning of the decade. Miami Blues picked up admiring reviews but went otherwise unnoticed on release, and even now remains under-recognised. The tale of “blithe psychopath” Federick J. Frenger, Jr., the girl whose heart he breaks and the detetive sergeant on his trail, director George Armitage’s adaptation of Charles Willeford’s novel wears a pitch black sense of humour and manages the difficult juggling act of being genuinely touching with it. It’s a little gem of a movie, perfectly formed and concisely told, one that more than deserves to rub shoulders with the better-known entries in its genre. One of the defining characteristics of Willeford’s work, it has been suggested , is that it doesn’t really fit into the crime genre; he comes from an angle of character rather than plot or h

Well, something’s broke on your daddy’s spaceship.

Apollo 13 (1995) (SPOILERS) The NASA propaganda movie to end all NASA propaganda movies. Their original conception of the perilous Apollo 13 mission deserves due credit in itself; what better way to bolster waning interest in slightly naff perambulations around a TV studio than to manufacture a crisis event, one emphasising the absurd fragility of the alleged non-terrestrial excursions and the indomitable force that is “science” in achieving them? Apollo 13 the lunar mission was tailor made for Apollo 13 the movie version – make believe the make-believe – and who could have been better to lead this fantasy ride than Guantanamo Hanks at his all-American popularity peak?

The Illumi-what-i?

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) (SPOILERS) In which Sam Raimi proves that he can stand proudly with the best – or worst – of them as a good little foot soldier of the woke apocalypse. You’d expect the wilfully anarchic – and Republican – Raimi to choke on the woke, but instead, he’s sucked it up, grinned and bore it. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is so slavishly a production-line Marvel movie, both in plotting and character, and in nu-Feige progressive sensibilities, there was no chance of Sam staggering out from beneath its suffocating demands with anything more than a few scraps of stylistic flourish intact.

People still talk about Pandapocalypse 2002.

Turning Red (2022) (SPOILERS) Those wags at Pixar, eh? Yes, the most – actually, the only – impressive thing about Turning Red is the four-tiered wordplay of its title. Thirteen-year-old Mei (Rosalie Chiang) finds herself turning into a large red panda at emotive moments. She is also, simultaneously, riding the crimson wave for the first time. Further, as a teenager, she characteristically suffers from acute embarrassment (mostly due to the actions of her domineering mother Ming Lee, voiced by Sandra Oh). And finally, of course, Turning Red can be seen diligently spreading communist doctrine left, right and centre. To any political sensibility tuning in to Disney+, basically (so ones with either considerable or zero resistance to woke). Take a guess which of these isn’t getting press in reference to the movie? And by a process of elimination is probably what it it’s really about (you know in the same way most Pixars, as far back as Toy Story and Monsters, Inc . can be given an insi

No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

The Matrix (1999) (SPOILERS) Twenty years on, and the articles are on the defining nature of The Matrix are piling up, most of them touching on how its world has become a reality, or maybe always was one. At the time, its premise was engaging enough, but it was the sum total of the package that cast a spell – the bullet time, the fashions, the soundtrack, the comic book-as-live-action framing and styling – not to mention it being probably the first movie to embrace and reflect the burgeoning Internet ( Hackers doesn’t really count), and subsequently to really ride the crest of the DVD boom wave. And now? Now it’s still really, really good.

You tampered with the universe, my friend.

The Music of Chance (1993) (SPOILERS) You won’t find many adaptations of Paul Auster’s novels. Original screenplays, yes, a couple of which he has directed himself. Terry Gilliam has occasionally mentioned Mr. Vertigo as in development. It was in development in 1995 too, when Philip Haas and Auster intended to bring it to the screen. Which means Auster presumably approved of Haas’ work on The Music of Chance (he also cameos). That would be understandable, as it makes for a fine, ambiguous movie, pregnant with meaning yet offering no unequivocal answers, and one that makes several key departures from the book yet crucially maintains a mesmerising, slow-burn lure.

I only know what I’ve been programmed to believe. But, of course, the same goes for you.

Raised by Wolves Season One (SPOILERS) Ridley Scott’s latest transhumanist tract is so stuffed with required lore, markers and programming, it’s a miracle it manages to tell a half-engaging story along the way. Aaron Guzikowski ( Prisoners ) is the credited creator, but it has the Ridders stamp of dour dystopia all over it, complete with Darius Wolski ( Prometheus ) cinematography setting the tone. Which means bleak grey skies, augmented by South Africa this time, rather than Iceland. Raised by Wolves is a reliable mix of wacko twist plotting and clumsy, slack-jawed messaging; like the Alien prequels, it will surely never be seen through to a conclusion, but as an agenda platform it’s never less than engaging (and also frequently, for the same reasons, exasperating).

You’re like a human mummy!

The Lost City (2022) (SPOILERS) Perhaps the most distressing part of The Lost City , a Romancing the Stone riff that appears to have been packaged by the Hollywood equivalent of a processed cheese plant lacking its primary ingredient (that would be additives), is the possibility that Daniel Radcliffe is the only viable actor left standing in Tinseltown. That’s if the suggestions at least two of the performers here – Sandra Bullock and Brad Pitt – are deep faked in some way, shape or form, and the other name – Channing Tatum – is serving hard atonement time. If the latter’s choices generally weren’t so abysmal and his talent in arears, I’d assume that was the only explanation for him showing up in this dreck.

Okay, just jump right into my nightmare, the water is warm.

Jerry Maguire (1996) (SPOILERS) I didn’t much like Jerry Maguire at the time, which I suspect is intrinsically linked to the fact that I didn’t much like Tom Cruise at the time. I’m still not really a massive fan of either, but the latter at least made an effort to rein in his most irksome traits subsequently. Jerry Maguire , however, finds him drawing on the same “bag of tricks” that mystifyingly transfixed his fan base a decade before in Top Gun . Bonnie Hunt suggested the toughest part of the role was “ playing a character that doesn’t like Tom Cruise ”. I wouldn’t have had that problem. I do not like Tom and Jerry.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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