- MPAA RATING: R
- RUNTIME: 110 minutes
Staff Writer
The fast-paced thriller “Contraband” stars Mark Wahlberg playing the role as Chris Farraday, the typical paycheck-to-paycheck guy living in the gritty city of New Orleans. A reformed top-notch smuggler, he is husband to Kate (Kate Beckinsale) and father to two young boys while owning a business installing home-burglary systems.
While enjoying life as the family man, Chris’s brother-in-law Andy (Caleb Landry Jones) gets involved in a drug-smuggling affair that goes horribly wrong. He brings in Chris to help end the battle with the recently released prisoner-turned-drug lord Tim Briggs (Giovanni Ribisi).
For Chris, there is no reasoning with the frightful drug lord, forcing him into one last job smuggling goods from Panama to protect his family.
The reformed crook is not only dragged back into crime but forced to risk his family and life to bail everyone out of trouble – including himself. Yep, it’s a plot straight out of Hollywood and rigged with predictability.
Unfortunately, Ribisi plays a good bad guy doing a very bad job at pulling off the unpleasant role of drug lord by failing to do the single thing necessary to make his part believable: remaining tough. Even worse, his gangster New Orleans accent only serves to annoy.
But while the story line is easy to foretell – the action is not.
The plot is complex enough to keep you watching. The script makes sense, but all Wahlberg does is play the poker-faced macho-man and this role was nothing short of typical for him. And very similar to “The Italian Job.”
Leading up to the cathartic end, the viewer is left to wonder whether or not Wahlberg can still work his smuggler magic around betrayed friends and the infamous border patrol.
Naturally, Wahlberg could sleepwalk through this role – and nearly does – but the movie remains just suspenseful enough to keep viewers from nodding off.
RATED R
Run time 110 minutes
Genre Thriller
Rave $7.50
Quality $7.00
Recent comments