Review: Contraband
Moviegoers don't ask for much in the month of January. For the most part, they understand what they're in for and don't have very lofty expectations. However, when they see ads for a film like Contraband with a cast lineup including Mark Wahlberg, Giovanni Ribisi, Kate Beckinsale, Ben Foster and J.K. Simmons, the expectations might be a little high, even for January. Director Baltasar Komákur manages to helm a competently made action movie that has a few minor problems with it, but is actually a halfway decent January release.
In the port town of New Orleans, legendary smuggler Chris Farraday (Wahlberg) has long since retired and leads a modest life running his own business and living with his beautiful wife Kate (Beckinsale) and their two sons. When his brother-in-law gets in trouble with local drug dealer Tim Briggs (Ribisi), Chris must take it upon himself to come out of retirement and make "one last run" in order to save his brother-in-law and prevent any danger from happening to his own wife and children.
All of that is fine and dandy and has the makings for a very exciting film. The trouble is, Contraband doesn't have enough faith in its viewers to know where all of the chess pieces are placed before the action takes place. You hear someone call Chris Farraday the "Houdini of smuggling" several times and thankfully each time they have a different example of why he's given that moniker, but after the second time, we get it, dude is good at smuggling things.
The other big problem is that with all the trouble the movie goes through to explain to you how much of a badass criminal Wahlberg's character is, it never fully explains what exactly is so scary and menacing about Giovanni Ribisi's character. At one point before the action takes place, Farraday confronts Briggs and proceeds to rather easily beat the crap out of him before agreeing to get on a boat and risk his freedom. From that scene, it appears as if both men are pretty similar in nature -- they're both fathers of young children and neither of them live in any sort of lavish housing despite their criminal nature. About the only menacing thing about Ribisi in this movie is that he talks with a weird voice, and even that is never addressed.
Mark Wahlberg has proven in the last few years that he can act incredibly well at times, and in Contraband he's certainly putting forth the effort to make a fun action film. Two smaller roles that could get overlooked but deserve some consideration are those of J.K. Simmons and Diego Luna (Y Tu Mamá También). Simmons as an overbearing ship captain and Luna as a psychotic South American criminal provide some much needed levity at times when the film begins to drag and feel mundane.
Despite some structural problems, Contraband does what any good action movie should do, and that is create a fun experience in which plot holes, arbitrary timeframes and even head wounds don't operate in any sort of capacity that is in line with reality. Mark Wahlberg fans shouldn't be disappointed with this January release, and there's certainly a lot to like about the film. It may offer a lot of what we've seen from heist films before, but for those of us who like that sort of thing, it's a really solid film.
Fans of the movie might be interested to know that it's actually based on a 2008 Icelandic film called Reykjavic-Rotterdam, produced by Contraband's director Baltasar Komákur. For a first-time filmmaker with some big American actor names, he didn't do a half-bad job with Contraband and I'm interested to see what he's got lined up next.