Parents' Guide to

2 Guns

By Sandie Angulo Chen, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 17+

Violence, nudity in entertaining-but-cliched action comedy.

Movie R 2013 109 minutes
2 Guns Movie Poster: Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg stand back to back, pointing guns out of the frame

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

  • 2:21
  • 2 Guns Movie: Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg sit together in a car
  • 2 Guns Movie: Paula Patton holds and points a gun

Community Reviews

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age 16+

Based on 8 parent reviews

Mary H.
Mary H. Adult
February 20, 2023
age 18+

Add a filter and watch without worrying

We would probably not watch this movie without subscribing to vidangel.com Watching on there filters out crude/blasphemous language Gratuitous violence and nudity. Filters are set to personal preference and enables us to watch more than we otherwise would.
Pulp22
Pulp22 Adult
November 10, 2021
age 16+

Good action movie with a content warning

It was an enjoyable film but it has a lot of language, violence, and a gratuitous scene or female nudity - the scene opens with a closeup if her bare breasts fill up the whole screen in full detail. She then walks around in nothing but a thong.
See all 8 parent reviews

What's the Story?

Bobby (Denzel Washington) and Stig (Mark Wahlberg) are jack-of-all-trades partners in crime on the Texas/Mexico border -- brokering drug deals with cocaine kingpin Papi Greco (Edward James Olmos) and planning a bank robbery. What they don't know is that each is acting undercover: Bobby is actually a DEA agent, and Stig is a former NCIS petty officer. When they rob the bank where Papi has $3 million stashed, they wind up with $43 million in cash -- all belonging to a mysterious villain in a cowboy hat (Bill Pullman), who has no problem killing anyone to get his money back. As true allegiances are revealed, Bobby and Stig realize they have no choice but to trust each other and work together to bring down the bad guys.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (8 ):
Kids say (9 ):

Kormákur knows how to direct an '80s-style buddy action comedy full of bullets and explosions, and were the screenplay tighter, this could have kicked off a franchise in the vein of Lethal Weapon. Washington and Wahlberg are masters of the odd-couple buddy cliché at this point in their careers, and the movie is the most watchable when they're riffing off of each other: Washington's Bobby is a stubborn one-man island who doesn't love anyone more than his job, and Wahlberg's Stig is an optimistic hothead who winks at waitresses and takes loyalty seriously.

The comedy parts of the story work well; one of the funniest jokes in the movie is when Stig tells Olmos' Papi that he looks "like the Mexican Albert Einstein." But the action plot gets a bit bogged down in all the twists and stereotypes: the double-crossing supervisor, the jilted ex-girlfriend, the climactic Mexican standoff. Still, despite its predictability, 2 GUNS is fun to watch because of its talented stars, who look like they're having the time of their lives, even when they're covered in blood and dirt. Far from perfect, the movie is still an entertaining piece of popcorn fare.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about 2 Guns' various forms of violence. What's the impact of both the gun violence/explosions and the scenes of Russian Roulette and the baseball bat torture? Do you think the filmmakers could have told the story with less violence?

  • Members of the military and various U.S. agencies are revealed to be not only corrupt but also helping the drug trade. Is this a believable idea? Why does the admiral tell Stig that blind loyalty isn't a good thing?

  • Some critics have bemoaned the fact that both Washington and Wahlberg waste their talent doing formulaic buddy films. What kind of roles would you prefer they take? Which of their movies are your favorites?

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