TITLE: Contraband
STARRING: Mark Wahlberg, Kate Beckinsale, Ben Foster, Giovanni Ribisi
DIRECTOR: Baltasar Kormákur
STUDIO: Relativity Media, Working Title Films, Blueeyes Productions, Universal Pictures
RATED: R
RUN TIME: 109 min
RELEASED: January 13, 2012

By Eric Stuckart
Creator, Destroyer

A new year, a new remake of yet another foreign language film that hasn’t even been out for five years, Contraband is a typically unimaginative remake of the Icelandic thriller Reykjavík-Rotterdam. It has the benefit of being helmed by Baltasar Kormákur, who starred as the lead in the original one, but ultimately it fails to really find its own identity due to unnecessary plot twists, stereotypical crime film tropes, and a lacking definitive tone throughout.

Wahlberg plays Chris Farraday, a former smuggler who went straight after getting married and starting a family. However, his immature and unbelievably naive brother-in-law Andy (Caleb Landry Jones) completely blows a smuggling deal of his own, and lands himself, along with Wahlberg and his family, into hot water with his boss, the sleazy Tim Briggs, played with little to no finesse by Giovanni Ribisi. So, Wahlberg does what he does best, leaving his wife (Kate Beckinsale) and children at home with his best friend Sebastian (Ben Foster), and gets back into the smuggling business for one last job, so that he can make enough money back to buy Andy out of his debt with Briggs.

If that were the whole of the plot of the film, Contraband could have been a tightly wound action caper, but a lot of unnecessarily complex twists and turns were thrown into the film in an attempt to make it more of a thriller. In their attempts to give it more depth, the filmmakers just ended up making it more predictable and contrived. Any flashes of creativity — however few and far between — are quickly dashed and replaced with the guts of the most clichéd elements of crime films. Granted, I’ve never seen the original for comparison, but if Contraband is closely following its source material, perhaps it should have went about it differently. A remake shouldn’t have to commit the mistakes of its predecessor if it can do the story justice.

However, the biggest problem I had with the film was the supporting characters and the inexplicable ways that they behave. For what it’s worth, whenever Wahlberg is on the screen, everything was fine. The mood was right, and the dialogue hit a sweet spot between gritty and subtly humorous, but the rest of the characters were walking stereotypes. The worst offender, in my opinion, was Chris’ wife Kate. Kate Beckinsale clearly tried to add a little spunk into the character, so it’s not the case of the audience viewing a pretty face with no personality behind it, but the way her character was written was just irritating to say the least. Taking on the role of the damsel in distress while her husband is practically a world away, the decisions she makes in the film are just annoying and you almost feel as though she deserves everything she has coming to her. I realize that’s a pretty negative way to view her character, but in this day and age, people just don’t do the things she does, and if they do, shame on them.

Then there’s Briggs, the type of crime boss that you’d see in a movie parodying crime films such as this, not in one that’s supposed to be taken somewhat seriously. His delivery does his character no favors. Nasally and thoroughly creepy — in a way that’s more pathetic than psychotic — it’s hard to imagine him being enough of a badass to have his own crew of criminals, let alone a successful one in the ruthless and violent drug world. Rather than a gang leader, he comes across more like the foot soldier trying to make a name for himself that never does in a bad mob movie.

Contraband is the type of film that shows enough promise and potential that it’s evident that it could have turned out to be a great film, but it ends up sabotaging itself at every possible moment. In many ways, that’s worse than a bad film, because as a viewer, it’s very easy to see where things could have been approached better, and the fact that it turned out so poorly in the end just makes it even worse. Sure, it’s somewhat stylish and there’s a few payoffs that help to offset the disappointments found throughout, but it’s not enough. Perfectly average in every way, it’s not a bad movie. It’s just that Wahlberg has a number of other films that fit very snugly into the crime genre, and most of them are much, much better.

RATING: 5.5/10

Front page image and interior stills from collider.com.