#Contraband cast movie#

He’s an acceptable action hero, like a lesser Matt Damon, with a three-note emotional range: concerned, angry and indifferent. Wahlberg treads overly familiar waters here.

What Kormákur mistakes for fresh and cutting-edge style is, sad to say, generic and hackneyed. Not intelligent enough to be controversial, the ending is just plain stupid.Īs a filmmaker, Kormákur clearly apes his favorite Hollywood action director, Tony Scott, favoring gritty color-saturated film stock, off-kilter camera angles, extreme close-ups and relentless quick-cuts, each shot lasting no more than a few seconds.

#Contraband cast movie#

The movie confuses scumbags for heroes and shrugs off the consequences for bad behavior. Without giving away the contrived ending, I must question the script’s bogus concept of redemption and reward, which basically shows that crime does indeed pay. Unfortunately, tempo doesn’t mean tension. About the only thing in the script’s favor is its breakneck pace, which it maintains from beginning to end. The narrative dead-ends and double-backs are more tedious than unexpected, and the big plot twists are clumsily foreshadowed.

Screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski makes his feature debut with a script that’s simple to follow but laughably convoluted. The characters and dialogue are groan-worthy clichés, and the old heist-gone-wrong storyline has been done so many times it could almost be its own subgenre. Beyond that bit of trivia, there’s absolutely nothing new on display here. What makes “Contraband” semi-unique is that it’s an American remake of a 2009 Icelandic thriller, “Reykjavík-Rotterdam,” directed by that film’s lead actor, Baltasar Kormákur, who played Wahlberg’s role. Unfortunately, that puts him in trouble with the local mob, to whom Andy now owes several hundred thousand dollars in buy money. In this case, it’s his numbskull brother-in-law, Andy (Caleb Landry Jones), who dumps his cargo of drugs to avoid arrest by customs officers. As usual, circumstances beyond his control force Chris back into the business. From the latter category, we have “Contraband,” a B-grade action thriller with “been there, done that” written all over it.Ĭast: Mark Wahlberg, Kate Beckinsale, Ben Foster, Giovanni Ribisiįilmed on location in New Orleans, the story follows Chris Farraday (Mark Wahlberg), a former smuggler and ex-con now enjoying a normal life with his wife, Kate (Kate Beckinsale), and their two young boys. January brings audiences a curious cinematic mix: Oscar-nominated movies until now shown only in limited release and studio trash held over from the previous year.