2 Guns on Blu-ray – The DVDfever Review

2 guns

2 Guns opens with a few scenes that introduce us to self-assured and selfish small-time thieves, Bobby (Denzel Washington) and Stig (Mark Wahlberg), or so it seems, wisecracking their way through life without a care while doing the age-old movie thing of having an inconsequential argument during a job which results in a restaurant exploding seconds after they’ve left it.

They’re both hiding something from each other – the fact that they both work for the authorities, yet both think that the other is a ne’er-do-well.

Their next plan is to step up and rob a bank of a mobster’s $3m, but there’s more to that scene than first appears, and also the secret between them is bound to come out sooner or later, but even when it does, you know in a film like this that they’ll end up fighting bigger fish and have to re-team to sort it out. After all, the trailer said so. It’s a well-worn idea, but we’re not looking for originality here.

2 Guns does a lot of things that so many films don’t these days: It doesn’t outstay its welcome, it doesn’t overplay its hand, it doesn’t try and be clever and throw in extraneous subplots which go nowhere – it delivers a solid piece of entertainment with great comic timing.


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The performances are all fine in this film, with the two leads carrying it. No-one seems to put in a major amount of effort here, but most of the leads – including Edward James Olmos as the main baddie – keep the one-liners flowing nicely, while the most work done is down to the editing to weave a great action film together. There’s also some neat appearances from Bill Paxton and Robert John Burke, while Paula Patton couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag.

Overall, 2 Guns is an engaging take on the buddy-actioner, with engaging direction from Baltasar Kormákur, who I hadn’t heard of before. I also didn’t know, until I saw the extras that it’s based on a graphic novel. On this showing, I think there’s definitely legs in it for a sequel.

Go to page 2 for the presentation and the extras.


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2 guns

The film is presented in the original 2.35:1 widescreen ratio and in 1080p high definition and it’s one of the rare films, these days, which goes to the trouble of filming in anamorphic Panavision, which gives the image a certain curved look at times, and gives it an edge over all those films which use the ‘flat’ Super 35 process which feels just like sticking black bars over a regular 16:9 image – which it basically is.

The print is crisp and clear throughout with no issues and looks fantastic on my Panasonic 50″ Plasma TV.

The sound is in DTS HD 5.1 and explodes when it needs to, complementing the visuals nicely with split-surround FX.

The extras are all much of a muchness and don’t go into any great depth. On the plus side, they’re all in HD:

  • Click Click Bang Bang: The Making of 2 Guns (6:03): Starting off with a clip from the last day of shooting (all on green screen) and including some brief chat, mainly from the two leads, the title of this piece seems to be longer than the piece itself, as it just touches in six minutes and then it’s done. It’s basically a watch-once puff-piece.

  • The Good, The Bad and the Sexy (8:07): Another brief piece with soundbites from cast and crew, this time focusing on the two leads.

  • Finding The Vibe (7:20): A general piece that covers locations, costumes and doesn’t seem to have any real hook.

  • Living Dangerously (9:02): This one focuses on the action.

  • Deleted Scenes (12:21): 8 of them here, but nothing that needs to be put back in the film. Shame there’s no subtitles on the extras as, like with the film, sometimes the dialogue goes by too fast and you simply can’t make it out.

  • Audio commentary: with producer Adam Siegel and director Baltasar Kormákur.

The menu features clips from the film playing to a small piece of the incidental music. There are subtitles in English for the Hearing Impaired and, thankfully, E1 do what most distributors fail to do, and that’s to provide a decent number of chapters. There are 20 here across the 108-minute running time.

Alas, what’s not good is that Entertainment One have stuck trailers for other films BEFORE the main menu, as if we’re still in the days of rental video. This is what the extras menu is for. As such, I shall not be listing them here, but they are quickly skipped. Oh, as is an advert for a chocolate bar, for crying out loud.


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FILM CONTENT
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
8
10
8
3
OVERALL 7


Detailed specs:

Cert:
Running time: 108 minutes
Studio: Entertainment One
Cat.no.: EO50713R0
Year: 2013
Released: December 9th 2013
Chapters: 20
Picture: 1080p High Definition
Sound: DTS HD Master Audio 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1
Languages: English
Subtitles: English
Widescreen: 2.35:1 (Anamorphic Panavision)
Disc Format: BD50

Director: Baltasar Kormákur
Producers: Andrew Cosby, Randall Emmett, George Furla, Norton Herrick, Marc Platt, Ross Richie and Adam Siegel
Screenplay: Blake Masters (based on the Boom! Studios graphic novels by Steven Grant)
Music: Clinton Shorter

Cast :
Robert ‘Bobby’ Trench: Denzel Washington
Michael ‘Stig’ Stigman: Mark Wahlberg
Deb: Paula Patton
Papi Greco: Edward James Olmos
Earl: Bill Paxton
Jessup: Robert John Burke
Commander Quince: James Marsden
Chief Lucas: Greg Sproles
Admiral Tuwey: Fred Ward
Dr. Ken: Patrick Fischler
Ferret Nose Julio: Derek Solorsano


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