In the view of Grantland‘s Wesley Morris, 2 Guns boils down to Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg “having a good time robbing banks and blowing up buildings and barreling through military security checkpoints and double-crossing people and shooting each other because none of it really means anything. You rarely get to see a pair of stars mired in this much danger but playing the whole thing as if they were on vacation. Wahlberg all but walks around the film with a paper umbrella behind one of his ears.”
I said roughly the same thing on 7.25, calling it “a silly late-summer jagoff that’s about Washington and Wahlberg playing ‘catch’ with each other — i.e., the old chemistry-rapport-mutual backscratch put-on/goof-off thing. Call it ‘attitude-surfing.’ The movie has no undercurrent, no themes — nothing except the wank-off vibe of everyone just making the damn thing and collecting their paychecks and taking their dicks out and stroking them as they cash their checks and hack around between takes.”
