Home » » This ain't Oceans Eleven

Kate Beckinsale is Back-in-Sales. She has had a rocking year with Underworld Awakening being the first film of 2012 to cross the $100m mark....

Kate Beckinsale is Back-in-Sales. She has had a rocking year with Underworld Awakening being the first film of 2012 to cross the $100m mark. And her 2nd film Contraband also topped the US box office just making over $90m off a budget of $25m. It's a remake of the Icelandic almost unpronounceable film Reykjavik-Rotterdam and this time around the main actor in that film directed the American version.
   The film follows Chris Farraday (Mark Wahlberg) an ex-smuggler saving his brother-in-law's (Caleb Landry Jones) life from a drug dealer by going to Panama to score millions of dollars in counterfeit bills. Jason Statham has a forte for one-last-job features but he doesn't look like a family man. So Wahlberg's OK here plus he's a good actor (The Other Guys, The Fighter). Beckinsale also pulls up the fed-up-with-criminal-antics-of-family wife. The film co-stars Ben Foster as Wahlberg's best friend and Giovanni Ribisi as the protagonist where everyone is a criminal.

  The latter 2's performances were Oscar worthy but sadly you can't say that for the film. Contraband is an above average film. Good but not great. It has a lot of energy and the plot is good and story fast-paced with decent action sequences. But the main problems are with the lack of characterisation and the way the plot was carried out. The plot unfolds boringly and it seems as if it copied sequences from other robbery films (Oceans Eleven) yet did not have the potential to outdo them. The film also reminds you of the 3rd season of Prison Break being set in Panama.
  It's written by Aaron Guzikowski adapted from the screenplay by Arnaldur Indriason and Oskar Jonasson who wrote the original. The shooting was top notch but writing, not so much. Hope he improves his skillset in the future. Like Roger Ebert commented, ''Contraband involves a lot of energy''. I agree and give the film 2.5/4.

2 comments:

Hassan Faheem said...

oooook nicE...gonna watch it sooooooon =)

Nisar Mustafa said...

Thanks for reading!