Contraband

Based on 2008’s Reykjavik-Rotterdam, Contraband follows former smuggler Chris Farraday (Mark Wahlberg) as he attempts one last job after his wife’s (Kate Beckinsale’s Kate) sketchy brother lands in hot water with a volatile criminal (Giovanni Ribisi’s Tim Briggs) – with the film subsequently detailing the myriad of problems that inevitably ensue. Filmmaker Baltasar Kormákur, whose Jar City remains one of this new century’s more intriguing mysteries, has infused Contraband with a generic, entirely uninvolving feel that immediately proves disastrous, with the aggressively dull atmosphere heightened by both Kormákur’s bland visual choices and Aaron Guzikowski’s hackneyed, conventional screenplay. It doesn’t help, either, that much of the film’s midsection follows Farraday and his crew as they run one illicit (yet utterly boring) errand after another, which, not surprisingly, results in a disastrous lack of momentum that prevents the viewer from working up any interest in the central character’s increasingly perilous antics. (That Wahlberg delivers a closed-off, distressingly wooden performance certainly doesn’t help matters.) The pervasive lack of tension ensures that the movie only grows more and more tedious as it progresses, and it’s worth noting, too, that the film’s “suspenseful” moments (eg Farraday attempts to clear out of a storage crate before the authorities show up) are simply unable to generate the excitement and energy that Kormákur is obviously striving for. And although there are a few bright spots here and there (eg Ribisi’s entertainingly broad performance, an admittedly decent armored-car robbery sequence, etc), Contraband primarily comes off as a needless waste of time that’s emblematic of everything that’s wrong with the thriller genre these days.

* out of ****