Man on Film: Contraband

If we are being honest, Contraband is your typical January action release. Realistically, it is not good enough nor does it have the cachet to warrant a more favorable release date for reaching a broader audience. Its lack of signature action set pieces or special effects-heavy sequences make for a pretty straightforward smuggling caper flick.

This isn't to say Contraband is awful. It is mediocre. To quote, Stu from the "Action Packed Heist" episode of The Life and Times of Tim,

I'm a Wahlberg guy.

With Kate Beckinsale in tow, it isn't hard to understand why Wahlberg's character would be willing to get back into the game to save her brother. Much like last fall's Ides of March and its casting of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti in the same film, Contraband becomes perhaps the only movie to have both Ben Foster and Giovanni Ribisi, who must have grown sick of auditioning for the same roles for the past ten years or so. Hell, my interest was even piqued when I saw that Baltasar Kormakur had directed the film. Having quite liked his debut film 101 Reykjavik and his follow-up The Sea, his name had fallen off my radar but seeing it in the opening credits had me hopeful.

Unfortunately the film never grabs the audience. Perhaps some of that was owing to the fucking four-year-old whose parents let her hop around in the aisle whilst talking*, but the plot kind of plods around, has some minor stuff happen, does not let the audience in on the plan (in an interesting way, of course), and has just enough turns to make it look like they tried.

*Sorry, but if you have a four-year-old, you kind of lost your right to take your kid who won't sit still or be quiet to a Rated-R movie. You chose to have the kid. Fucking deal with it. Don't make your kid everyone else's problem. 

All in all, Contraband was a milquetoast action flick.

Instead of watching that trailer, though, you could watch this (I assure you, if I could change the music, I would)...