2 Guns

Stars: Denzel Washington, Mark Wahlberg, Edward James Olmos, Paula Patton, Bill Paxton, James Marsden, Fred Ward, Robert John Burke

Director: Baltasar Kormákur

It goes like this: two men, Bobby Beanz (Washington) and Stig (Wahlberg) set fire to a diner as a diversion to their robbing the local bank by blasting open its deposit boxes. They expect to escape with three million dollars, but instead find themselves looking at upwards of 140 million.

Truth is that, unknown to Stig, Bobby is an undercover agent for the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency). And, unknown to Bobby, Stig is an undercover agent for Naval Intelligence.

Now, given the amount of boodle they've accumulated, they have to ask whether their bosses - Bobby's on-off girlfriend Deb (Patton) and Stig's squeaky-clean Commander Quince (Marsden) know more than they're letting on. Especially when Stig has been ordered to kill Bobby when the job is done, and the money turns out to be a CIA slush fund, which the local federal boss (Paxton), in cahoots with the local druglord (Olmos), is anxious to reclaim. Whew!

OK, light the blue touch paper and prepare for virtually non-stop action, punctuated by some expected joky, well-cool buddy-buddy exchanges, which do tend to die out as the film goes on; the action is so unrelenting in fact as to become tiring before the end, making the few lulls seem even more tedious than they are,

Washington is cool enough to drop into your iced coffee, but Wahlberg matches him in terms of give-and-take dialogue. It's a polished mainstream product geared to please, but with all the depth of a paddling pool.

David Quinlan

USA 2013. UK Distributor: Entertainment One. Colour by deluxe.
109 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 15.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 1, Violence/Horror 2, Drugs 1, Swearing 2.

Review date: 11 Aug 2013