Contraband

“Contraband” takes us on a journey into the cutthroat world of smuggling, or more specifically drug smuggling and counterfeit money smuggling. Our protagonist, Chris Farraday (Mark Wahlberg, “The Fighter”), is a smuggler, or at least he used to be; once the Jason Bourne of the smuggling business, he’s now a responsible family man setting up alarm systems in the Algiers neighbourhood of New Orleans. He has a loving wife, Kate (Kate Beckinsale, “Underworld: Awakening”), and two young boys. His life is peaceful, quiet and clean; he’s gone straight, is content and isn’t looking back. This, as movie conventions tell us, is to be interrupted.

One night, Kate’s young and foolish brother, Andy (Caleb Landry Jones, “X-Men: First Class”), is smuggling several kilos of cocaine on a cargo ship when U.S. customs decide to throw the vessel a surprise party. Andy dumps the drugs over the side and thus later has to appear empty-handed in front of ruthless mobster Tim Briggs (Giovanni Ribisi, “The Rum Diary”). Infuriated, Briggs demands that Andy pay him back the money he threw into the ocean; he makes his demands clear by putting Andy in a hospital bed.

Learning of the situation, Chris finds himself catapulted back in the smuggling business as he helps Andy pay back his debt of $700,000, to be delivered to Briggs within two weeks. If the debt is not paid, Chris and Andy’s family will be in serious danger. Deciding not to go down the drug route (he doesn’t like to handle the stuff), Chris instead goes for the more promising business of counterfeit money.

With the help of best bud Sebastian Abney (Ben Foster, “The Mechanic”), Chris quickly assembles a crack team and goes with them on a container ship to Panama City, where they are to collect $10 million in fake bills and take them back to New Orleans for Briggs to receive. Sounds simple. It ain’t. Meanwhile, back in New Orleans, the sadistic Briggs is keeping a close eye on Chris’ wife and their two children, who are placed in even more danger when the operation in Panama City goes a tad awry.

During its first reel, I was enjoying “Contraband.” Its plot gripped me and pulled me along a fairly intriguing ride through the methods and dangers of the smuggling community (if such a thing exists). Its script provided a few vaguely interesting characters, one of which I found to be very interesting (I’ll get to him later). Its direction was slick yet gritty, an adequate match for the topic at hand. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it thrilling, but I was engaged in the story and curious about what route it would take, although common sense provided the predictable, and ultimately correct, answer.

Following this opening reel, however, “Contraband” stumbles, and stumbles violently. Once intriguing, the plot descends into cliché-ridden nonsense that soon becomes needlessly convoluted and increasingly predictable. Its characters are revealed to be threadbare in their construction, most simply cruising their way through the plot, bereft of any real sense of development. The grip of the story slackens, leaving us feeling uninvolved, uncaring and quite bored; if there’s anything a Mark Wahlberg thriller shouldn’t be, it’s boring, but “Contraband” achieves this.

Wahlberg sustains a stable status as a fine leading man, although his commitment to the role is fairly questionable; I think it’s a testament to Wahlberg’s Bostonian charm that he can sleepwalk his way through a leading role and come out the other side with his image entirely unscathed. There’s much to say about his character: Chris is the best of the best in the (illegal) line of work he once enjoyed but had to abandon for the sake of his family. As he lives in blue-collar bliss, free from his crime-ridden past, he is jolted back into that world with little warning. His family now placed in a position of danger, he must revisit the methods he once mastered, a chore which he finds himself almost enjoying. However, Chris is not the interesting character I was speaking of earlier.

That character is Briggs, the vicious villain who very nearly keeps the movie’s head above water. As played with scene-stealing, unhinged intensity by the versatile Ribisi, Briggs is a tattooed, bearded, beady-eyed brute bereft of any shred of human decency or a sense of humour. He is a loathsome ruffian, violently and pointlessly attacking Chris’ wife in her home in a number of effectively harrowing scenes. Like a wild wolf snarling and snapping away at a defenceless pup, he likes to apply his dominance over those around him; the casting of Ribisi is an inspired one, and one that comes close to saving the film. Close.

This is Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur’s first venture into mainstream American movie-making; as such, it’s a shame that “Contraband” is the formulaic and fruitless film that it is. Compared to Wahlberg’s past vehicles, it’s certainly not the mind-numbing clunker that was 2007‘s “Max Payne,” nor is it the satisfying and engaging 2003 remake of “The Italian Job;” what it is is “Shooter” with less shooting, more smuggling and the same amount of drabness.

5/10