Fifteen years after their chaotic rise to fame as New York’s most unlikely heroes, Detectives Allen Gamble and Terry Hoitz return in The Other Guys 2 (2025). Time has not been kind to either of them. Gamble has left the force to become a corporate safety consultant, living a quiet suburban life surrounded by spreadsheets and ergonomic chairs. Hoitz, meanwhile, has been demoted yet again after an “accidental” car chase through a golf tournament. When a new wave of white-collar crime threatens the city, the two men are reluctantly reunited — and chaos, of course, follows.
The sequel opens with the same self-aware energy that made the original a cult comedy. Director Adam McKay returns to balance absurd action sequences with biting satire of modern policing and corporate corruption. This time, the villain is tech billionaire Miles Vexler, whose “green” investment empire hides a network of digital fraud and political bribery. When an algorithm designed to predict criminal behaviour begins falsely targeting innocent citizens, Gamble and Hoitz must expose the conspiracy while navigating a world far more complicated — and tech-savvy — than they ever imagined.
Will Ferrell reprises his role as Gamble with his trademark awkward sincerity, while Mark Wahlberg’s Hoitz remains the perfect straight man to his partner’s unshakable optimism. Their chemistry, even after a decade and a half, feels effortless. The film’s humor leans into nostalgia, riffing on middle-aged burnout, social media obsessions, and the absurdity of modern law enforcement. A standout sequence features the duo chasing hackers through a self-driving car convention, culminating in an out-of-control Tesla parade.
Supporting the leads are Tiffany Haddish as a fast-talking cyber-crime expert who constantly outsmarts both men, and Pedro Pascal as a charming but morally ambiguous FBI liaison. Cameos from Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson — in a hilarious flashback “memorial video” — provide the perfect callback to the first film’s most outrageous moment.
At its heart, The Other Guys 2 isn’t just another buddy-cop comedy. It’s a reflection on how the world — and comedy itself — has changed. Where the first film mocked Wall Street greed, the sequel takes aim at tech-age hypocrisy. Beneath the explosions and absurd one-liners lies a story about friendship, redemption, and the idea that maybe the “other guys” were the right guys all along.
