Reviews For "2 Guns" Much Like The Film Itself, Are Violent

With a cast boasting Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg in the main roles, there’s little a movie like 2 Guns could do to mess it up. And yet this brass tax action flick apparently didn’t quite work for a most critics.

Watch the 2 Guns trailer below.

The Washington Post’s Ann Hornaday isn’t too thrilled with the overall themes of the film, which don’t really stretch far beyond the title. While the review is quick to praise the chemistry between Wahlberg and Washington (wouldn’t that make a great name for a cop show?), it also pegs the movie as unoriginal and at times, downright offensive. Hornaday points out that parts of the movie can only be enjoyed, if “one year after the shooting in Aurora, Colo., and seven months after Newtown, you don’t mind seeing guns used as props, fetishes, phallic symbols and, most tastelessly, jokes”

Denzel Washington is one of the only redeeming aspects of this film.

The L.A. Times’ Kenneth Turan is just a but more moderate in his assessment. “2 Guns” has style in terms of writing and direction. It’s an ambitious story, however, according to Turan, it flounders in its abuse of too many plot twists. While the review also praises the film’s visual style, Turan is less impressed than most by the chemistry between the two characters, or in his words “a pair of wise-cracking hard guys whose glib patter is more irritating than amusing” He also doesn’t fail to note the film’s troubling attitudes towards women and gender, violence and a plethora of other issues. This seems to be a major deal-breaker for most critics.

The other one would be Wahlberg.

USA Today’s Claudia Puig is just thoroughly underwhelmed by 2 Guns. While she too points out that the two leads seem to be having a blast, everything else around the movie is described as either insensitive or formulaic, with Puig describing this as a film that “has worked so hard to be twisting and clever that it runs out of steam and becomes outlandish, marked by a surplus of violence — too often casual and gratuitous — for what essentially is a buddy cop movie.”

Despite the cast however, the critics are unanimous: the film is ultimately skippable.