Contraband

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Movie Details

• Genre: Action/Adventure, Suspense/Thriller
• Release Date: 2012-01-13 Nationwide
• Running Time: 110 min.
• Director: Baltasar Kormákur
• Cast: Kate Beckinsale, Mark Wahlberg, Ben Foster, Giovanni Ribisi, Diego Luna, J.K. Simmons, Lukas Haas, William Lucking
• Writer: Aaron Guzikowski
• Distributor: Universal Pictures
• Official Site: Contraband Official Site

Will there someday be a movie where the "one last job" goes off without a hitch? Not Contraband, anyway, which begins with that time-tested premise, then subjects its protagonist to a feature-length demonstration of Murphy's Law. Chris Farraday (Mark Wahlberg) is the retiree runner reluctantly reactivated, a legend who could once slip anything into the Port of New Orleans, but who has since gone legit for the good of his young sons and wife, Kate (Kate Beckinsale, essentially wearing a target through the movie). When Kate's kid brother screws up a run for a roughneck drug-smuggler (Giovanni Ribisi), Chris has to cover the loss by orchestrating and performing a comeback job, running counterfeit bills out of Panama City. The abiding tone of Baltasar Kormakur's film is nervous, prickly agitation, regardless of whether the content calls for it. This fits with the frantic scenes of Chris planning and executing, though in more slow-burn moments, the energy manifests itself in the distracting tic of a twitchy zoom lens. Contraband is best, then, when it is keeping up with the nuts and bolts of criminal work, while the job itself — sneaking goods onboard a boat under the noses of the crew with the help of a few friends on the ship's manifest — is a novel one, cinematically described. No one, however, could mistake Contraband for anything but what it is: a shift-job genre movie — not a bad day's work, satisfied to match the blocky trudge of its star rather than attempt panache.