Movie Review: Contraband
You know the storyline all too well. A retired criminal must commit one last big crime before he can get out of the game for good. Countless authors and filmmakers have used this handy plot device, some more effectively than others. The bad news for Contraband, Mark Wahlberg’s latest film, is that writer Aaron Guzikowski and director Baltasar Kormákur have pumped too many tiresome clichés into this American version of the 2008 Icelandic thriller Reykjavik-Rotterdam, rendering their take on the “one last heist” concept unmemorable.
Chris Farraday (Wahlberg) is a retired smuggler, a former runner of contraband via cargo ships from Central and South America to his home port of New Orleans. Chris was one of the best smugglers of his time and, since this is a Mark Wahlberg movie, we also learn that he’s talented with his fists. Now a happily married man and a father of two, Chris runs his own home alarm installation business and seems content living the clean life. Things go awry when his younger brother-in-law Andy (Caleb Landry Jones) has to ditch a load of drugs he was smuggling into the Big Easy for ruthless drug dealer Tim Briggs (Giovanni Ribisi in a strangely creepy, slightly comical role). When Chris steps in to play mediator for his wife’s little brother, he realizes that Briggs expects nothing less than full payment for his lost cargo and even goes so far as to threaten Chris’s family. For Chris, then, there’s only way out of this mess. Make one last score to settle the debt.
The first act is solid enough. Once again, Mark Wahlberg plays Mark Wahlberg, and why not? It usually works. In the case of Contraband, Wahlberg’s charm and likability save the movie. Wahlberg plays a great tough-guy family man. We feel for Chris when he realizes he has to get back into the gloomy world of international smuggling, the same trade that landed his father Bud (William Lucking) behind bars. Chris’s intricate plan involves smuggling countless millions in counterfeit U.S. bills on a cargo ship’s return trip from Panama to New Orleans. Predictability and impossible convenience take over from there.
Mark Wahlberg in “Contraband.” © 2011 – Universal Pictures.
Chris and Andy conveniently become crew members on the target ship, the S.S. Bellatrix, where Chris joins a crew he knows from past work, including a few men who are more than ready to help him with his operation. Captain Camp (a fun-to-watch J.K. Simmons) is suspicious of Chris from the start. He detests Chris’s father and is well aware of Chris’s past, but the conflict between the two men never reaches its full potential. Regardless, a sizable chunk of the remainder of the film focuses on Chris and crew’s dilemma of getting the counterfeit bills from the Panamanian mainland and stashed aboard the Bellatrix before the ship departs for home. There are plenty of action sequences, fights, and double-crosses to keep interest levels high until the end, but there are too many of those “Wait a minute, that was way too easy” moments. Of course, watching any action-thriller requires a fair amount of suspension of disbelief, but sometimes filmmakers ask viewers to take it too far. The result is an insulted audience, and it happens more than once in Contraband.
If you like Mark Wahlberg, then you’ll probably like Contraband. You’ll root for Chris Farraday because…well, because he’s Mark Wahlberg and we want him to kick butt and save the day. If you’re looking for a two-hour escape from reality and don’t mind overly long boat scenes, a comical villain, ludicrous escapes, and a wasted role for a wonderful actress named Kate Beckinsale, who plays Chris’s wife and does little more than cry and worry about him during her brief appearances, then Contraband is for you. The problem for the filmmakers is that I doubt they intended Contraband to be any of those things.
