O beautiful for spacious skies

Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg are starring in a new movie called “2 Guns.”

All of the advertising for the film shows our two heroes, back to back, firing their ready pistols while dollar bills rain down upon them.

This is no doubt a crucial plot line, but does it also tell us a lot about the actors and the makers of the film?

Washington and Wahlberg are both genuine movies stars, bankable and beloved by their fans. Washington also happens to be a gifted and serious actor who studied for years at ACT in San Francisco. Wahlberg was a rocker, until Penny Marshal of Laverne and Shirley fame spotted him and told him he ought to be in the movies. That’s where he’s been ever since.

My concern is this. 

In the current climate of gun debate in the United States, only weeks after the end of the Zimmerman-Martin trial and in the same decade as several mad mass public murders, how can anyone of conscience peddle this drek, take money for it and call it entertainment. The title says it all. Guns are good. Guns are fun. Guns are the right solution to problems. Did the NRA sponsor this idiocy?

Whatever I may have thought of Washington (considerable) and Wahlberg (not much, lucky dope) before this celluloid poop, I now think a lot less.

Acting – even for big movie stars, often especially for big movie stars – is a precarious business at best. You may live at the top of Mulhullond Drive and you will still wonder where your next pay cheque is coming from.

Nevertheless... do these folks live entirely in a bubble? Do they not read the papers or watch the six o’clock news?

Can they be citizens or men of conscience?

Apparently not.