2 Guns

“You’re my people,” Mark Wahlberg tells Denzel Washington over and over in the completely nonsensical surprise hit 2 Guns, AKA Tango & Cash Go to the Desert and Also Bill Paxton is There. So the boys are thieves of sorts avenging the death of an associate, and then they end up with $40 million of the CIA’s money, and then they turn on each other, but they’re both double agents, and then they piss off a drug kingpin (Edward James Olmos, nearly unrecognizable) and the Navy (James Marsden barely registers), plus rootin’ tootin’ CIA something or other Paxton is also after them so obviously they should just get back together. Washington has a wholly unbelievable, age-inappropriate romance with Paula Patton (Wahlberg gets nothing), the only woman with a line in the movie, and Blake Masters’ script, which hosts a very out-of-time Tori Amos joke, hopes (charismatic wordplay) is enough to pull everybody through. It doesn’t work at all but it also works completely, you know? Perfect for a dumb August afternoon. —Tara Thorne