Contrabanned

'Contraband' features little in the way of action, and instead tries hard to build tension with narrative.

Directed by Baltasar Kormákur, Contraband is an unremarkable heist movie, which features little in the way of action, and instead tries hard to build tension with narrative. Unfortunately not only is this narrative simply a violent rehash of similar genre films before it, it also comes across as overly convoluted in its failed effort to build drama.

The film is about Chris Farraday (Mark Wahlberg), a former smuggler, who has given up his life of crime to live honestly with his wife Kate (Kate Beckinsale) and children. The movie shifts into second gear when Chris’s brother-in-law Andy (Caleb Landry Jones), who also happens to be a smuggler, is forced to dump his consignment of drugs from a cargo ship in order to avoid arrest. Unfortunately for Andy, this doesn’t please his highly temperamental crime boss Tim Briggs, played in a fine performance by Giovanni Ribisi, for whom he was sneaking the contraband into the US. When Chris gets involved to protect Andy, he finds his own family threatened by Briggs, who demands $700,000 to make up for loss of the drugs.

Alongside Andy, and old friend Danny Raymer (Lukas Haas), Chris makes his own smuggling run from Panama on a cargo ship helmed by a corrupt ship captain (J.K. Simmons), while leaving his family in the care of his untrustworthy friend Sebastian Abney (Ben Foster). From this point on, the movie tries but fails to shift into third gear. What follow are a dozen plot twists, most of which are dead on arrival. It’s a lot of build-up without any real climax.

The strangest thing about Contraband is the shaky-cam method it employs, similar to those used in gritty cop dramas like “The Shield” and “NYPD Blue”. Here, the shaky-cam feels out of place, largely because of the ungrounded plot and the film feels like it is trying too hard to make up for it with the use of such methods. And although the bulk of the cast lift the film with some strong performances, Mark Wahlberg comes across as inappropriately muted, displaying such limited emotional range that I was left wondering if he had been sampling some of that contraband himself. And for a character-driven film, an uninspired performance from its lead is simply criminal.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, February 12^th, 2012.