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While there was certainly room for improvement, Contraband generally succeeds well at what it wants to do. As it stands, she's a stereotypical damsel in perpetual distress. Either of these things would have made Kate a far more valuable character. Maybe she could have played a role in the scheme herself. Perhaps she could have encouraged him to take the job and save her brother, rather than issuing the standard warning about the dangers of One Last Job. It would have been great to see her as more of an equal to Chris. Without Kate, Chris doesn't have as compelling a reason to take on One Last Job. As with far too many films, the female is simply a plot device. Kate is the only woman of any prominence in the movie, yet she's here mostly to get smacked around by Briggs. The primary flaw of Contraband, aside from that slow first hour and Giovanni Ribisi's now-standard overacting, is a poorly developed female character. The manner in which things unfold at the end is also pleasing, as the story throws in a few twists you probably won't see coming. The staging of the scene is just right, so that we feel the potential for catastrophe at every turn. A sequence in which Chris has to smuggle the counterfeit cash onto the boat in a van is particularly tense.
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Perhaps because he is intimately familiar with the material, Kormakur knows how to keep the pace moving and the action escalating. Contraband was directed by Baltasar Kormakur, who played Wahlberg's role in Reykjavik-Rotterdam, the 2008 Icelandic film on which it is based. He seems fully engaged here, and the familiar premise benefits from the intensity he brings to it. Mark Wahlberg could do this kind of role in his sleep, of course, but to his credit, he doesn't. Contraband rather intriguingly has two levels: one in which Chris tries to successfully complete his “run,” and another in which he must discover the hidden motives of those around him.
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Meanwhile, Briggs is maintaining phone contact with Andy, giving him instructions that, oddly, seem designed to hinder Chris. It starts with a snafu, when Chris visits a Panamanian crime leader and ends up having to spontaneously hatch a plan-within-the-plan. It's not that simple, though the story throws in a lot of complications that crank up the tension levels considerably. The trick involves hiding it from the stern ship's captain (played by J.K.
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There, they will take possession of millions of dollars worth of counterfeit money. With the help of right-hand man Sebastian (Ben Foster), Chris assembles a crew and manipulates the system to get them all on the same ship, which is headed toward Panama. Are you rolling your eyes too?Īfter this dusty set-up is in place, Contraband does something unexpected: it actually gets good. To bail his brother-in-law out and protect his own clan, Chris decides to do the proverbial One Last Job. Further, he intends to come after everyone Andy cares about until the debt is paid – including Chris and his family. Briggs is furious and wants him to pay an extravagant amount of money to compensate for the loss. To avoid getting busted by Customs officials, Andy dumps a load of drugs over the side of a boat. Kate's screw-up younger brother Andy (Caleb Landry Jones) fancies himself a badass, a la the “old” Chris, and runs drugs for a local dealer named Briggs (Giovanni Ribisi). He has forsaken the criminal life to settle down with wife Kate (Kate Beckinsale) and their two kids, and now runs a security system business.
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Chris Farraday (Mark Wahlberg) is a former smuggler who operated amidst the shipyards of New Orleans. The film gets off to a slow start, setting up a premise that I've seen, oh, about six thousand times before. I'll admit it: my eyes rolled during the first half hour of Contraband. Mark Wahlberg plans some illegal activity.