Movie Review: Contraband (2012)

Contraband 
A movie review by Dave Randal
February 19, 2012

Genre: Action | Crime | Drama

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Ben Foster, Giovanni Ribisi, Kate Beckinsale

Director: Baltasar Kormakur,

Writers: Aaron Guzikowski

Release Date: January 13, 2012 (USA)

Plot: To protect his brother-in-law from a drug lord, a former smuggler heads to Panama to score millions of dollars in counterfeit bills.

Want to know more about this movie?: Contraband(2012) IMDb Page

I usually like watching movies with Mark Wahlberg. A lot of people will critique him as just being a muscle head who can't act, but I think he has a lot more depth as an actor than people think. In his new movie Contraband though I think he comes off pretty bland.

Contraband is about a man named John Bryce who was a former criminal who would smuggle things back into the country on a ship that he was apart of the crew of. He has since cleaned up his life starting a family and a security business. His young brother-in-law gets into some trouble after botching a smuggling job for some drug dealers and needs John's help to do one last job to pay off his debt.

Like I said, Mark Wahlberg comes off very bland in this movie although it is hard to say whether it was his or the script's fault. It could be that the dialogue wasn't good enough for him to do anything with. Wahlberg has shown that he has charisma in other movies such as The Other Guys(2010). He always seems to come off as a very nice guy in most movies he is in and he does that in this, but it is hard to feel anything for him when the script is so dry.

The first half the movie is pretty boring for the most part. It has patience, but I think it has a little too much patience and it really hurts the flow of the movie. I enjoy the ways they show how they smuggle things onto the ship, but other than that the first half is very slow. In the second half the action really starts to pick up especially with this really big set piece, but considering how slow the rest of the movie is compared to this it doesn't really look like it fits in the movie.

Playing the wife of Mark Wahlberg's character is Kate Beckinsale. I honestly has no clue it was the same woman that was in the Underworld movies until I looked it up. Sure she is playing a very different character in this movie and she does okay, but she doesn't really stand out. Playing Mark Wahlberg's best friend in the movie is an actor named Ben Foster. Ben Foster has done quite a few big movies, but he is usually in the supporting cast or just the co-star. I would really like to see him get some bigger roles here in the next few years, because I think he has a lot of potential as a top actor in Hollywood. In this movie, like the rest of the movie, he is okay but again there just isn't much for him to do to show off how much of a talented actor he is.

The only actor who does stand out and breaks the blandness streak is Giovanni Ribisi who plays a thug drug dealer. Similar to Ben Foster, Ribisi is mostly just used as a co-star or the supporting cast for movies. He started out on cable TV and really caught the public eye as an actor after a guest spot on The X-Files. In this movie he is all tattooed up and speaks with a somewhat weird nasaly voice which sort of comes off as cartoonish at first, but I think it works for the character he is playing.

I enjoyed some aspects of this movie, but for the most part I thought it was too slow. A lot of the early scenes seemed edited really weirdly. It would be like two people would be having a conversation and then it would just cut to the next scene. I'm guessing they may have just been scenes of dialogue that were cut, but I'm not sure. Either way I think the movie doesn't flow all that well, but at the same time it isn't the worst movie. It is a decent movie, but I think it falls more into the category of just being okay.

Dave's Rating-A-Okay
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Dave's Star Rating- ★★★(3) out of ★★★★★(5)