[h2]6. Every single extra looks like they being forced to act at gunpoint[/h2]
Here is one of the weirder problems I have ever seen in a movie. How often do you actually notice background extras, the people who populate space to give a film an added sense of context and realism? Not ever, if the extras are doing their job well, because that is their function: They are extras, invisible, important only as scenery and background detail – and yet in 2 Guns, I found myself fascinated by just about every single extra on screen.
That is because all of them, every last one, looks like the set of 2 Guns is the last place on earth they would ever want to be. They do not just look uncomfortable, awkward, or screen-shy – they look practically scared, and their pained facial expressions and scrambling, clunky movements are impossible to miss. It is as if director Baltasar Kormakur instructed each and every extra to pretend they had just witnessed a terrible crime, and were now trying to return home safely. Uniformly, across the entire movie, the extras look like they want out, and fast. Perhaps it is easy to recognize because I, sitting in the audience, felt exactly the same way.
[h2]5. Bill Paxton made me want to kill myself[/h2]
If this is an exaggeration, it is only a slight one, as every second Bill Paxton and his abominably wretched abortion of an antagonist spent on screen made me question the meaning, worth, and value of my own life. Words cannot do justice to how terrible this character is. Paxton plays the CIA agent out to find the stolen money, and while it is a fairly stock character on the surface – a comically over-the-top Sheriff archetype – the film is so incompetently written, and Paxton’s performance is pitched so broadly, that the character stumbles out of the gate as a major, excruciatingly obnoxious disaster.
My main question here is why on earth you would cast an actor as aggressively boring as Bill Paxton tends to be in a part that requires goofy, manic energy. This character would be unbearable regardless of who played him, but Paxton is just horrible, every one of his ‘funny’ notes ringing false, all his ‘creepy’ beats playing far too dark, and the overall effect coming across as unendurably annoying. I despise every single, solitary thing about this character and performance, and the worst part is that Paxton is only one of three irritating villains this pile of garbage has to offer.
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