Watching the opening credits for Contraband, I caught that it was based off of the film, Reykjavik-Rotterdam (2008). The original Icelandic film has received much praise and was Iceland’s official submission to 82nd Academy Award’s Foreign Language in 2010. Unfortunately, something is lost in translation with this reiteration because I was wholly unimpressed.
Contraband is directed by the star of the original, Baltasar Kormákur and takes place in New Orleans instead of Reykjavik. Chris Farraday (Mark Wahlberg) comes out of retirement as a smuggler to pull off a big job to clear the debt of his brother-in-law and enlists the helps of his friends in doing so. There are so many questions here that it’s hard to know where to begin. How long has he been legit? Why did he get out of the life? Why does he still associate with the people of his former life if he wants nothing to do with it? Why would friends let you? Even putting all that aside, it’s difficult to care about any of the characters based on their actions.
There are no big surprises with the cast, they’re exactly who you would expect to be cast. It’s lead by Mark Wahlberg as Chris Farraday and rounded out with semi-notable names like Giovanni Ribisi (Gone in 60 Seconds) as the bad guy and Kate Beckinsale (Underworld) as Chris’ wife, Kate. J.K. Simmons (Juno) shows up as the Captain of the ship but even he’s not as good as normal. I did love Ben Foster (The Mechanic), but I’m worried he’s going to get stuck in the Hollywood rut if he’s not careful.
Something else that bothered me was the style of filming. It’s kinda shot like an independent film, but with a big budget production like this, it’s terribly distracting in elaborate action sequences. It’s difficult to follow what’s happening when the camera is constantly zooming in and out while switching from character to character.
It’ll probably get a decent turnout the first weekend, but once word-of-mouth spreads, it’ll tank. I enjoy a good heist movie and I thought that at the very least, I would get that satisfaction, but I was disappointed when nothing was left to the imagination. Every single plot point is revealed so that there are absolutely no surprises at all. I did not see the original, from the praise that it got, I imagine that there were some twists and turns that people didn’t see coming or at least were revealed with an “ah ha” moment. Perhaps for this remake, they didn’t think American audiences were smart enough to put it together themselves. Whatever the case, I look forward to watching the original version.
Rating: No suspense, lots of stuff blown up. 2/10
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