'2 Guns' Movie Review: Denzel Washington & Mark Wahlberg Make Great Pair, Critics Say [TRAILER]
Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg team up in the movie 2 Guns, and critics have deemed them the perfect duo.
"As a team, Washington and Wahlberg keep the riffs going as this action-comedy shimmers and builds to a terrifically entertaining heat haze. Then the bullets fly, almost as fast as their mouths, and everything hits its target," The New York Daily News wrote in its Wednesday review.
Washington plays Robert "Bobby" Trench, an undercover DEA agent, while Wahlberg is an secret Navy intelligence officer named Michael "Stig" Stigman. Neither one is aware of the other's profession. The two are on the run after their failed attempt to bring down a drug cartel. Wahlberg and Washington eventually discover that they are each other's best bet for survival against the gang of bad guys.
Variety points out that a movie of this kind depends greatly on the lead character's chemistry and by casting Washington and Wahlberg together, the Baltasar Kormakur directed film succeeds.
"The roles are hardly the most challenging of their respective careers, but they invest them with a lot of personality and charm, from the way Wahlberg delivers an ill-timed quip to Washington's constant fussing with Bobby's array of designer hats," Variety also wrote on Tuesday.
While The Hollywood Reporter also makes note of both Wahlberg's and Washington's charm, it calls the movie too "complex."
"The filmmakers feel obligated to deliver a certain quotient of summer-movie action, when a more slow-burn focus on deceit and second-guessing might have worked much better," THR wrote on Tuesday.
It also praises the film's writers, Blake Masters and Steven Grant, by writing that "everyone has smarter-than-usual dialogue to spar with."
Based on the 2008 BOOM! Studios comic series, 2 Guns comes to U.S. theaters on Aug. 2. It also stars Paula Patton, Bill Paxton, Fred Ward and James Marsden.
