On video–Double crosses and cash pile up in movie adaptation of BOOM! Comics’ “2 Guns”

It would be pretty difficult to screw up a movie with Denzel Washington, Mark Wahlberg, Edward James Olmos, and Bill Paxton. How often do any of these guys make a bad movie? So it’s no surprise the 2013 action film 2 Guns is everything you’d want it to be. It’s now available on DVD and Blu-ray.

2 Guns is an adaptation of the Steven Grant crime series of the same name from BOOM! Studios. Although it’s billed as an “action comedy,” it should fall in the same genre as Die Hard. Sure, there are some good, funny lines throughout, but like Bruce Willis’s humor, Washington and Wahlberg’s great banter is not what most would call “comedy”. It’s a classic action flick. But the label doesn’t really matter. 2 Guns simply delivers the goods.

Washington plays Bobby T aka Bobby B aka Bobby Beans. Bobby is a DEA officer trying to take out a Mexican drug cartel with unsuspecting bad guy partner Stig, played by Wahlberg. Only Bobby doesn’t know Stig actually is a Navel Intel officer. Stig is after the cartel and wants to hurt the cartel by pulling off a robbery to take the cartel’s stash of money in a bank vault, figured at about $3 million. They pull off the job, but are surprised that instead of $3 million they find $43 million. Enter Paxton’s Earl, one of two top-notch villains. Guess whose money was stolen? The other villain is the head of the cartel, Papi, played by Olmos.

The result is plenty of back-stabbing and double crosses. It’s a familiar action formula picture, in the spirit of the similarly plotted Walter Matthau bank robbery flick Charley Varrick. Look for the X-Men’s James Marsden as another baddie and Paula Patton as Bobby’s girlfriend and a DEA operative.