The story snakes around with twists that can be seen coming for miles, culminating in the inevitable and disturbing terrorizing of Chris’s missus amid gaping plot holes. Like Ribisi, he’s creepy and nasty in all the best ways and manages to come up with a new use for duct tape that works impressively. Diego Luna ( Y Tu Mamá También) takes on the small role of Panamanian drug runner Gonzalo with reptilian zeal. He knows what Chris has gotten up to in the past, yet can only manage an order for crew to keep an eye on him.įrom a casting perspective, Contraband should work far better: Wahlberg plays the hard-working American outsider with typical determination. ![]() Just how Chris the ex-con manages to secure a job on the boat defies all logic, much like the reaction from the captain (J.K. Tim starts putting muscle on Andy’s relatives to cover the debt and it looks like Chris has no choice but to go back into his original line of work.īased on the 2008 Icelandic drama Reykjavik-Rotterdam - that country’s entry in the 2010 Foreign Language Film Oscar race - the original movie’s star and producer, Baltasar Kormákur, now sits in the director’s chair with mixed results as the action bounces between New Orleans and Panama.Īided by his best friend Sebastian (Ben Foster), a stylish loft dweller with a fondness for lollipops, an affection that soon becomes annoying, Chris gets a job on a container ship where he once worked (and smuggled) and puts the old gang together to run a Panama job involving millions in counterfeit currency. Things go pear-shaped and Andy owes crime boss Tim Briggs (Giovanni Ribisi doing his usual outstanding evil turn) a bigger debt than he can pay. He’s such a great, sweet-talkin’ guy it’s hard to understand his violent streaks, even if they surface only when his family is threatened.īut his dumb-as-dirt brother-in-law Andy (Caleb Landry Jones) wants in on the previous family business and tries his hand at smuggling drugs into the U.S. His celluloid rehab comes thanks to marriage to Kate (Kate Beckinsale) and a family home populated by a couple of moppets. It’s a so-so heist actioner with some serviceable thrills and better-than-average stunt work that hangs on a formula plot punctuated with fits of disturbing violence aimed at women.Ĭontraband stars Mark Wahlberg as reformed career smuggler Chris Farraday, the nicest ex-crook you’ve ever met. ![]() ![]() Mediocre Contraband is best described as a “January movie,” a forgettable flick that joins the often-lightweight fare dumped in the multiplex this time of year after a glut of awards-hopeful holiday releases. Starring Mark Wahlberg, Kate Beckinsale, Ben Foster, Giovanni Ribisi and Lukas Haas.
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