by Michael Welles Schock
When working with action-comedy, experience has shown it is best to keep story development quick and clean. Scenes should progress with focus and energy. Plot points should surprise, yet clearly communicate urgent narrative significance. But if I were to describe 2 Guns in a few words, it would be dense and muddy. Sometimes slow. Even at moments confusing. This all arises from one simple mistake. The film overloaded the washing machine.
The characters spin in 2 Guns
When you go to a laundromat, it is smart to first split all your clothes into nice, manageable-sized loads. There is a load of whites. A load of colors. Another load of colors (you went through a lot this week.) You do not want to do too much at once. But if you are an income-deprived college type looking to save quarters, you might try to cram everything into one load. This never works well for two reasons. For one, the inside of the machine can hold only so much. Two, if each piece of laundry does not have enough room to splash around and do its thing, nothing gets completely clean. 2 Guns does something similar. It crams too many lines of action into too small a narrative space, resulting in a big tangle that interferes with a clear and focused narrative.
Edward James Olmos as Papi Greco in 2 Guns
This becomes obvious with a simple overview of the plot [minor spoilers ahead]: Bobby Trench (Denzel Washington) and Michael “Stig” Stigman (Mark Wahlberg) are partners in business with Mexican drug lord Papi Greco (Edward James Olmos). Trench and Stig double-cross Papi by stealing millions of dollars he has stashed at a local bank. But as it turns out, Trench is working undercover for the DEA. At the same time, Stig is working undercover for the Navy NCIS. Both have orders to turn on the other once the robbery is completed. However, the NCIS faction, led by Commander Quince (James Marsden) is revealed to be dirty. They seize the money and now they want to kill Stig. Similarly, the DEA also has dirty players (later revealed to be working in cooperation with the NCIS) and leave Trench high and dry. That may sound like enough problems already, but then the CIA shows up. And guess what?
James Marsden as Trench in 2 Guns
They too are corrupt. Papi’s money was actually the CIA’s dirty money. With no room for patience, the CIA faction, led by the mysterious “Earl” (Bill Paxton), sets about hunting down and torturing everyone involved. Not wanting to be left out on the fun, Papi also throws himself into this mosh pit in order to double-cross the CIA and take the money for himself. So to recap, we have the DEA, the NCIS, the CIA, drug lord Papi, and our two protagonists all going in different directions at once. Everyone wants to kill everyone, everyone is making and breaking deals with everyone, and no one ever seems to have a full idea of all that is going on. If a 109-minute movie requires a flowchart just to keep track of its plot, it is trying to make too much happen in too short a time. It has overloaded the washing machine, turning the narrative into a dense ball where events interfere with each other rather than work together to build a clear, focused narrative.
This overloading harms 2 Guns in a number of ways. First of all, things are often so convoluted they become confusing. Second, the film is front-weighted with an extremely long first act since so much material must be set up to launch so many lines of action. The story’s Inciting Incident (the bank robbery) does not occur until roughly 25 minutes into the film, and End of 1st Act Turning Point (the moment Trench and Stig team up to fight their various antagonists) does not happen until around minute 55. Such a long first act means not only that the story takes forever to find its groove, but leaves it with less than an hour for its second and third acts, where the real action is supposed to occur. Such a time constraint is made even worse by the fact that there are three lines of action (the Papi line, the Qunice line, and the Earl line) competing for precious space. None of them ever have the chance to develop to a dramatically-satisfying degree since each line interferes with the others and steals the screen time each one of them needs.
Bill Paxton as Earl in 2 Guns
In case you missed it, 2 Gun’s three separate lines of conflict means the film has three antagonists: Papi, Quince, and Earl. One might think more villains would provide greater drama, but the opposite is true. (Spider-man 3, anyone?) A friend and mentor of mine Lew Hunter is fond of saying that when it comes to antagonists, “One shark beats two barracudas.” What he means is that when two villains must occupy the same story, each can only hold half the narrative weight, control only half the story, and therefore hold half the threat they would have had they gone solo. Hence, they become weaker fish. When three villains share a story, their power is cut to a third. (What’s weaker than a barracuda? A tuna? A sea bass? A sock-eyed salmon?) Rather than adding a greater threat to the protagonist, each antagonist only appears as a weaker and far more easily defeated hurdle since their capability for menace is diluted by the act of sharing the stage with others. Papi, Quince, or Earl could all have been great villains on their own, but here they only work to cancel each other out.
I do realize what 2 Guns was trying to do. The writer thought that three lines of conflict would provide triple the opportunities for surprising twists and turns. But as I mentioned in my previous review of Pacific Rim, you do not make a story better by simply filling it with more “stuff.” This isn’t a pizza. More toppings do not equal a better pie. A great cinematic story chooses one line of action and then takes the time to build it to something clear, dramatic, and powerful. The hero must struggle against a great white shark, not a school of minnows.
