REVIEW: Contraband
Contraband is the latest in a long line of paint by number action/thrillers. Chris Farraday (Mark Wahlberg) is an ex-smuggler that got out of the game for love. His love interest is his wife Kate (Kate Beckinsale). The limited screen time together, and chemistry makes their relationship non believable. Chris’s relationship with his best friend Sebastian Abney (Ben Foster) is better established, and has some genuine feeling during the time in the film they are trying to assemble a crew to go on another smuggling run because Chris’s brother-in-law, Andy (Caleb Landry Jones) gets in over his head, and it’s up to Chris to bail him out. There are a couple tense scenes, but they are too few and far between to make this movie and better than your typical movie going fare.
This feels like a movie that Mark and Kate collected paychecks for. They do very little with the rolls, and the audience is left to try to care about these characters when they obviously didn’t. The better roles in Contraband went to the characters Sebastian and Tim Briggs (Giovanni Ribisi). Foster further establishes himself as a solid actor that demands your attention when he is on scene. Ribisi plays the villain in his eccentric, possibly mentally handicapped way. He does fine with the role, but the main problem with his character is that he is constantly getting his rear kicked by Wahlberg in the film. We can’t take him seriously; he doesn’t pose much of a threat after that. Even when Chris is away in Panama grabbing the loot, Tim Briggs’s threats can’t be taken seriously because he never feels like anything more than a low level street thug.
The action scenes are meant to add suspense, but you never feel like the main characters are in actual danger. Everything just feels one dimensional. Even the ways stuff is smuggled is predictable, and laid out for the audience. I’d be genuinely shocked if someone is surprised by the reveal at the end. Contraband relies on the cast to pull of an uninspired script. It’s average in every way, even for your typical January theater release. If you want to see this movie I encourage you to see it in a matinee at most.
RATING: 2 out of 4
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