Review No.62: Contraband

Trying to play catch-up now as we enter May and the first of three reviews is of the Mark Wahlberg film Contraband to which I'm not sure which genre it falls. I think it has aspirations of being sort of an action thriller in the vein of Gone in 60 Seconds though that had the appeal of a lot of shiny fast cars and Angelina Jolie not watching much instead Contraband has Kate Beckinsale not doing much while husband Wahlberg goes out looking for drugs. The similarities with Gone are like Cage, Wahlberg has also been out of the game in his case as a smuggler but has to do one last job after his brother-in-law gets into trouble with Giovanni Ribisi's psychotic drug baron. Going back on the ship his father used to use with his trusty sidekick, played by Lukas Haas, along with said brother-in-law he raises the suspicions of JK Simmons' captain so is forced to be the ship's errand boy. Once in Panama he meets up with Diego Luna who plays the guy who has the gear however once again he is a bit loopy so he and Haas wind up in trouble and almost miss the ship. Meanwhile on dry land Ribisi is threatening Wahlberg's wife played by Beckinsale so she and their sons go to stay with a family friend played by Ben Foster but is he all he seems?

As I said Contraband has the idea that it is a slick crime thriller in the vein of Ocean's 11 or the aforementioned Nic Cage film however its main problem is that it's very boring. There's no denying that Wahlberg is a charismatic film presence however here he is wasted as a slightly boring lead character who you fail to believe once did this smuggling lark for a living. In fact on the side of the good guys it is Ben Foster who is actually given a more interesting role so he runs with it and indeed it is the scenes featuring him that are some of the film's more intriguing. Ribisi and Luna both ham it up as two crazed villains on each side of the border however at times both of them lapse into caricature almost making this seem like a spoof of those heist films rather than one of them. It's fair to say that everything is quite stylish however there is no substance and not even JK Simmons doing another of his blustered authority figure roles can save the day. The biggest failure is the casting of Kate Beckinsale who has very little to do throughout although does seem to survive getting beaten about a lot throughout the film. I have to say I didn't have high hopes for Contraband but I thought at least I would be entertained however that didn't happen that's not to say it didn't have its moments but overall I was just disappointed.

Verdict: A film that promises a lot but never delivers with some really dull scripting and acting at least has a couple of interesting performances that bolster it up to 4/10