By James Sabata
DEA Agent, Bobby Trench (Washington) and Navy Intelligence Officer Michael Stigman (Wahlberg) rob a small town bank to get evidence to take down a Mexican Drug Cartel, each having no clue that the other is also an undercover officer. Their covers are blown when the robbery goes wrong. Forced to deal with the fact that they can’t trust one another, but have no one else to turn to, Trench and Stigman team up to try to get out of an inescapable situation, involving the Cartel, the CIA, and the Navy trying to kill them to get the money back.
The Good: The chemistry between Mark Wahlberg and Denzel Washington is awesome. There is some good dialogue between the two. The characters are complex enough to keep them entertaining. Even thought they’re actually not well rounded characters, they feel like they are while you’re watching it. The action scenes are engaging and fun, particularly the car chase between the two main characters.
The Bad: There is nothing too new here. The plot is almost like a maze, with so many twists and turns, you might get lost. A lot of the plot is either really predictable (like who Harvey is) or just so outlandish and over the top that it would never work in reality. While I expect that in most action movies I watch, it might bother some people. There are a couple parts of the plot that do not really seem to add up in the grand scheme of things, other than looking cool. Also, for an action movie, this film is actually very dialogue heavy and that seemed to weigh it down in places. Also, the fact that these two are specially trained, go undercover, work together for months on end and never so much as suspect that the other could also be an undercover agent seems a little ridiculous.
Overall: This movie was a lot of fun. Most of the one-liners between the main characters was creative and interesting. They even managed to make ordering breakfast hilarious. If you go in expecting greatness, you will be disappointed. If you go in wanting nothing more than a generic action film, you should enjoy it a lot.
4 out of 5
