Director Baltasar Kormakur lacks energy despite stellar cast
Based on his experience in the genre and his Academy Award-nominated performance in the crime thriller “The Departed” (2006), a heist thriller starring Marky-Mark would sound like an excellent source of popcorn entertainment. While this movie may be in a familiar field for Mark Wahlberg, it may also seem too familiar to the audience.
A remake of the 2008 Icelandic film “Reykjavik-Rotterdam,” “Contraband” can best be described as your average B movie heist/crime film. There is nothing terrible about it, but director Baltasar Kormakur puts little energy into this film and it completely disappoints with a hackneyed plot.
Wahlberg plays former smuggler Chris Farraday, who was considered the best in the business before he started a family with his loving wife, Kate (Kate Beckinsale). However, unfortunate circumstances involving his brother-in-law, Andy (Caleb Landry Jones) and a crime boss named Briggs (Giovanni Ribisi) force him to backslide into his previous life.
Chris’s brother-in-law, Andy (Caleb Landry Jones), who remains in Chris’s old business, screws up a job when he throws a load of drugs overboard when the ship is searched. Briggs then forces Chris to smuggle $10 million in fake bills onto a shipping freighter by threatening to harm his wife and two sons.
With its many moments of attempted tension and deceit, “Contraband” contains a heavily unoriginal plot filled with nearly every tired plot point one can find in the genre. There’s the former big-time criminal who is forced out of retirement for one final job, the wife and children of the protagonist who receive threats of death that you can see coming from a mile away.
There is also the “in the nick of time” ending that sums up the entire movie: one big cliché.
The plot is also much more complicated than it needs to be, particularly at the halfway point when Chris’s crew arrives in Panama. They are given a “very limited” amount of time to complete the job, but they continue to run into complication after complication. They inspect the bills in one place to find that they aren’t good enough, and then get better ones in a massive warehouse run by a gang boss. They are then forced to assist the gang boss in robbing an armored truck in exchange for receiving the fake bills. Complicated enough for you?
The action is also “very limited” in this film, narrowed down to just one shootout/chase sequence. That’s not to say that “Contraband” lacks any thrills,but these thrills are hit-or-miss, most of them involving “race against time” moments.
While some performances are satisfying, most of the supporting cast doesn’t make “Contraband” worth trafficking in. Kate Beckinsale, especially, is terribly underused and does little in her female-victimization role. She is basically the devoted wife that eventually gets transformed into a plot device for the final act. Ben Foster as Chris’s best friend, Sebastian, doesn’t impress either, failing to come off as the tough guy his character is supposed to be.
Wahlberg barely satisfies with a performance that only requires him to look and act tough while delivering choice one-liners like “You think you’re the only guy with a gun” and “I’m coming for you.” However, it wouldn’t have hurt to give his character that same sense of humor that made him engaging in “The Departed.”
Ribisi’s helium-voiced drawling gangster is easily the most enjoyable performance since he seems to be having fun playing a bad guy who is equal parts menacing and hilarious.
“Contraband” is passable as your typical heist film, but it’s also one of those films you just wish was better.