Movie: Contraband
Release Date: January 13, 2012
Studio: Universal Pictures
Director: Baltasar Kormákur
Screenwriter: Aaron Guzikowski
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Kate Beckinsale, Ben Foster, Giovanni Ribisi, Caleb Landry Jones, Lukas Haas, Diego Luna, J.K. Simmons
Genre: Action, Thriller
Official Website: Contrabandmovie.net
IMDB Rating: N/A
Story: If ever there were a typical January movie, it’s Contraband, a film so dreary (and downright distasteful) that no studio would think of releasing it in December, when all eyes are focused on quality. I never saw the 2008 Icelandic film on which it’s based, but I presume it must have been better than this, to persuade savvy producers that it was worth remaking in English. Baltasar Kormákur, who starred in the original, directed this adaptation.
The setting is New Orleans. Mark Wahlberg plays a former criminal who, like his best pal Ben Foster, has gone straight. Then his wife’s kid brother fumbles a drug-smuggling run and winds up owing big bucks to a loose-cannon thug (Giovanni Ribisi) who not only threatens him but his entire family—including Wahlberg’s wife and kids. What else can the guy do but suck it up and pull “one last job?”
Problems begin when the caper itself becomes cumbersome and, ultimately, preposterous. (Although he’s supposed to be a savvy guy, Wahlberg repeatedly fails to predict the many obstacles in his path.) This is exacerbated by a wide array of unappealing and sleazy characters; by the end, I didn’t even feel comfortable rooting for the so-called hero. Virtually all the actors go down with the ship, helpless to rise above a ponderous screenplay by Aaron Guzikowski. I wish Wahlberg, Foster, Ribisi, Kate Beckinsale, J.K. Simmons, Lukas Haas, and Diego Luna brighter prospects in 2012.
A good caper movie should be light on its feet, but this one bears the weight of a heavy tread. Contraband left a bad taste in my mouth, which is not what I’d call a ringing endorsement. But it is what I’ve come to expect from major studio releases in January.
Contraband isn’t just about counterfeit. It is counterfeit.
That’s because this remake of the 2009 Icelandic crime thriller Reykjavik-Rotterdam appears to be a cerebral caper flick but is in actuality a sluggish action thriller.
Set in New Orleans, it centers on the predicament of one Chris Farrady, a legendary high-seas smuggler played by Mark Wahlberg, who is trying desperately to leave the dangerous, high-stakes world of international smuggling behind in the name of protecting his family (his wife, played by Kate Beckinsale, and their two young sons) and run his legitimate business installing security systems.
When his brother-in-law (Caleb Landry Jones) messes up a drug deal, his ruthless boss, a drug lord played by Giovanni Ribisi, forces Chris back into the underground life by demanding that he once again run contraband as a way of settling his brother-in-law’s debt.
With the help of his best friend and fellow smuggler, played by Ben Foster, Chris rounds up a crew and heads for Panama City in search of millions in counterfeit bills, which he’ll then (mission impossible alert!) sneak into the Port of New Orleans.
But things go wrong — surprise, surprise — and his three loved ones become targets.
The director, Baltasar Kormakur, who is also one of the producers, starred in and produced the original version. Here, as a director, he indulges in distractingly shaky handheld camerawork and antsy editing, cheats shamelessly on the narrative timeline, and spends far too much time on obligatory action scenes that stop his film dead it its tracks.
Sometimes the film seems more about shooting than smuggling.
The how-will-they-manage details, with pieces of the puzzle gradually revealed, are by far the film’s best feature. Yet the director, not trusting his subject matter, finds it necessary to litter the landscape with macho posturing and car crashes and gunfights.
Worse, he trusts the inherent drama of the subject matter so little that he has a character stick a gun in the face of small children for no good reason and brutally beat up a woman for even less of one. Sadists in the audience ought to love it.
The script by Aaron Guzikowski, based on the screenplay for Reykjavik-Rotterdam, certainly has an abundance of plot, and manges to get us rooting for the smugglers by trotting out the hoary one-last-score-or-we’ll-do-something-dastardly-to-you device, which we could live with more easily if there weren’t also so many iceberg-sized plot holes and nonsensically arbitrary behaviors.
As in a goodly number of his starring vehicles (The Fighter, The Departed, The Italian Job, Max Payne, Four Brothers, We Own the Night, Shooter), Wahlberg — who is also one of the film’s producers — plays a reluctant, resourceful, tough guy.
True, he stays well within his comfort zone — and takes a giant step back from 2010's Oscar-celebrated The Fighter, which he starred in and produced — but he is undeniably and effortlessly effective there.
So we’ll counterfeit Contraband with 2 stars out of 4, which makes the grade for this smuggling thriller on the high seas a “high C.”
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