Mark Wahlberg can still work a scene, however thin the script.
Contraband is exactly the sort of vehicle that Steven Segal, and Charles Bronson before him, brought to sweaty, kick-ass, femur-shattering life. Loaded with slime bucket drug lords, gritty New Orleans barrooms and enough f-bombs to fill any respectable rapper’s latest iTunes download, the film offers real suspense but even more predictability.
You’ve seen this movie before. You’ve even seen it with Mark Wahlberg in the lead. But to be fair, our middle-aged incarnation of Marky Mark can still work a room.
The recycled scenario is one of those working class hero templates so beloved of Segal and Bronson. (Bruce Willis too). Chris Farraday (Wahlberg) has paid his dues for his former life as a smuggler and now, settled into a happy marriage with hairdresser Kate (Kate Beckinsale) and their two kids, he just wants to stay on the right side of the law and pay the mortgage by installing security systems. Unfortunately, Kate’s little brother Andy (a Botticelli-faced Caleb Landry Jones) has blown a drug deal in a big way, and the local punk boss (Giovanni Ribisi) wants payback, yesterday.
You know where this is going. Farraday goes ballistic but finally agrees to turn one last smuggling trick, contacting his former collaborators in drug running, money laundering and, oh yes, grand larceny. Can you say Dirty Dozen? After a few atmospheric shots of the booming New Orleans shipyards, our hero is on his way to Panama to pick up a huge haul of counterfeit dollars, leaving his wife in the protection of his best friend (Ben Foster). Now everybody knows you never leave your wife in the hands of your best friend, right?
Gorgeous urban vistas and hypnotic shots of the busy docks and Panama Canal traffic help keep our eyes busy while the predictable shipboard hide-and-seek gets underway. Make no mistake—this film’s “plot” would have been impossible without cell phones. Lots of cell phones, by which good guys notify each other as to when the bad guys are nearby, etc. When Farraday and his sidekick Danny (Lucas Haas, all grown up since his days as the child star of Witness) finally gain access to the cocaine factory where the transaction was supposed to happen, it turns out that almost everybody has been double-dealing, including the punk kid brother-in-law. The sleaze factor is thicker than Mickey Rourke’s ego in this slum hacienda full of pit bulls, razor wire and tattooed lowlife.
Farraday and Danny are forced to help Panamanian drug Gonzalo (Diego Luna, in a deliciously nasty performance) in a final act of theft. Pretty much everybody is a bad guy in this now–boring, now–exciting Miami Vice fiesta of greed, addiction, sexy cinematography and very bad decisions.
Mostly we keep wondering just why Wahlberg made this film. There’s nothing redeeming about these characters, as there was in The Fighter. Wahlberg himself, who still pulls off attitude and enough ripped abs to be believable, pretty much mails in his performance. He chases bad guys, he uses his cell phone to help the plot along. He uses the f-word to help the plot along. He uses his fists to help the plot along. By the film’s end you realize that not only did director Baltasar Kormakur not have an original idea, he had too many conflicting storyboards. Is Contrabanda caper film? Sometimes. A gritty, violent, explosion-laced tale of urban losers? Yeah, that too. A suspense crime drama? Almost. In the end, the film works on none of these levels. But it does take the viewer—the viewer well-stocked with popcorn and nothing else to do on a weekend afternoon—for a wild and breathtaking ride during the final half hour. And that’s not nothing.
Contraband
R; 110 min.
Plays countywide
