“Nothing’s gonna happen…alright? I promise.” Well you know when a character says that in a movie, everything is about to go wrong. Mark Wahlberg stars in yet another Hollywood remake of a recent foreign film. This time it’s a 2009 Icelandic film called Reykjavík-Rotterdam starring Baltasar Kormákur (who directed this remake). It’s about the ins and outs of smuggling on cargo ships and getting in and out of a life a crime. Chris Farraday (Wahlberg) is the Harry Houdini of smuggling but retired and went straight before he was caught. However, his younger brother-in-law followed in his footsteps and messed up. Now, Chris has to do one last run to protect his family.
The movie isn’t exactly good but it has its funny parts, thrilling parts, and it’s entertaining. It’ll be a great rental or something to catch on tv…it’s not strong enough to spend time and money watching it in a theater. I didn’t enjoy how it was made – it uses the moving camera technique way too much and kept zooming into character’s faces trying to show emotions that weren’t there. This directing style adds a lot of depth to a movie but when it’s overused like it was in Contraband, it just gets annoying. Having said that, there’s a good amount of action (although some of it being completely out of place and ridiculous) and a lot of tense sense that were suspenseful and thrilling. Mark Walberg did a decent job but I kept thinking he wanted to say hi to my mother for him.
He sure does love his lollipops
I didn’t even realize Kate Beckinsale was in the movie until her name popped up in the opening credits but then forgot she was in it again because they didn’t use her enough. She was great in her scenes but they kept the spotlight on Mark when they should have allowed her more screen time. Giovanni Ribisi is the cracked out bad guy who always takes things too far, Ben Foster is the best friend / ex-smuggling partner of Chris, and J.K. Simmons is the captain of the ship. But be warned: some things aren’t what they seem. But be warned: the twists are pretty damn obvious. The acting was pretty stale as you didn’t really care for anybody other than Chris and his family. This is one of those movies where you end up rooting for the bad guy with good intentions.
I actually liked Giovanni Ribisi's character in this
The movie is based in New Orleans and goes to Panama. They travel to the underworlds of each locale but still make the cities look pretty awesome. You also get a glimpse of ship life aboard these huge ocean carrier ships. It makes smuggling look easy as you just need to pay a bunch of people off to get stuff on the ship. The hard part is not getting caught and getting that stuff off of the ship. The movie takes an Oceans 11-esque approach where the plan is set and people do they’re tasks but then you don’t really know what’s going on unless you follow the clues. This adds to the suspense and thrill as you have to wait and see who the ultimate winner is in the cat and mouse game of smuggling.
He's gonna slow down...he's gonna slow down
Contraband was an entertaining movie and will make you laugh a few times so it passes but other than that, it’s just another Hollywood remake of a tired, worn-out story that has been told countless times. There’s nothing new or fascinating in this one so set your expectations pretty low. I haven’t seen the original so I can’t comment on whether its better or worse but I can almost guarantee that Hollywood replaces subtle character nuances with over exaggerated action and obvious metaphors. Someone should make a checklist or bingo game of Hollywood cliches like: character reassures nothing will go wrong, somebody goes off the wagon, character makes it in the nick of time…every time, etc. Or I guess they use that checklist to write the scripts…
Tags: Baltasar Kormákur, Ben Foster, Contraband, Giovanni Ribisi, J.K. Simmons, Kate Beckinsale, Mark Wahlberg, Reykjavík-Rotterdam
Matthew Fong created advancescreenings.com and is the lead contributor. He watches every type of movie and will try almost anything twice. You can follow him on twitter here: @matthewfong
