“2 Guns,” which I reviewed yesterday, has good chemistry between its leads, good dialogue, but that's about it. The most moving part of the movie for me happened before the lights dimmed.

Patricia and I went to see the 4:30 show on Sunday afternoon at the Regal Meridian in downtown Seattle. We were supposed to meet a friend at a restaurant to celebrate her birthday, but the friend wound up with a migraine, canceled, and we wound up doing this instead.

In the lobby I noticed a black woman, 60s I'd guess, sitting by herself on a bench. She stood out for being in her 60s, and for the Sunday church hat she wore, and for the big purse on her lap. The rest of us were dressed in the slob/slut clothes typical for a hot weekend afternoon: stuff too baggy or too tight. She was dressed proper. She looked out of place.

I saw her again after we sat down in the theater. She was still alone. She came in by herself and sat down off to the side, with her back straight, her hat on her head, her purse in her lap.

Is it the hat that killed me? Is it that she was by herself?

The rest of the theater was the usual lowest-denominator crowd, slouched, bored looks on their faces, checking their smartphones before the show began. During the movie, the guy behind us kept laughing and crowing at all the stupid shit. He thrilled in the violence and the revenge and the explosions. Hollywood kept pushing his buttons and he kept making the proper noises.

Then there was this lady off to the side.

I'm sure I have her story wrong—it's not just Hollywood that tends toward the reductive and sentimental—but since she didn't seem the type of person to go to an R-rated shoot-em-up on a Sunday afternoon, I figured she went for one reason. She had her guy. He was in this. So she went. For her, the title might as well have been 1 Gun.