We have a buddy cop movie where both are not really cops and not really criminals, but they flagrantly break the law wherever necessary so they can follow their own personal sense of morality and questionable ethics.Mark Wahlberg brings the situational humor much like he did in the great movie Three Kings. I am now struggling to try to review the movie without giving away all of the details. There are some slight twists and big turns that are really better if you don't know they are coming.
Mark does a very good job playing essentially a lunkhead for most of the movie. He's played it before, and he will likely play it again. He's not as big of an idiot in this movie as he was in Pain and Gain, but he's not a brain trust.
Denzel plays a toned-down version of the character he played in Training Day. I find his goatee to be off-putting, and I can't exactly figure out why. Other than that, he plays pretty much the same guy as he was in Man on Fire or even John Q.
Bill Paxton shows up, and everything goes to hell. That guy just about ruins every scene he's in, and that's when he's NOT trying to put on a southern accent. I've lived in Nashville for a number of years now, and I know what a Southern drawl sounds like - what he's doing isn't it. He's supposed to be a bad ass, and he come across as just an ass.
Edward James Olmos plays a drug lord. He does a certainly serviceable job in doing so, but his character is written about as two dimensionally as it could be. He had nothing to work with, so he went ahead and played a cookie-cutter character. Fine.The action was good, if implausible
Acting was good
Story was very good - nice twists
Dialog was good
Effects was very good
4.0/5
