CONTRABAND (Baltasar Kormákur). 109 minutes. Opens Friday (January 13). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NNN
Contraband stars Mark Wahlberg as an ex-smuggler risking everything to run one last job, and yeah, that’s a movie he’s made before. It’s a movie everyone has made before, come to think of it – including director Baltasar Kormákur.
Kormákur starred in 2008’s Icelandic thriller Reykjavik-Rotterdam, and now he’s in the curious position of directing a remake of that film. It’s a very faithful remake – right down to the puckish use of a Jackson Pollock canvas as a running gag – but since Reykjavik-Rotterdam didn’t really register in North America, that won’t be a problem.
I’m beginning to think that remaking foreign films no one has seen could solve the problem of Hollywood running out of ideas. Certainly, Contraband makes a case for it the twists and turns of the original script (co-written by Kormákur and Arnaldur Indridason) transpose nicely to New Orleans, with a few plot points upgraded. Wahlberg’s smuggler-turned-security-contractor specializes in counterfeit bills rather than alcohol, and both the dollar values and general sleaziness of the original film have been upped by an order of magnitude.
But the basics are sturdy enough: family man Chris is drawn back into the smuggling game after his brother-in-law (Caleb Landry Jones) ends up on the hook to a local heavy (Giovanni Ribisi). To settle the debt, Chris takes a cargo ship to Panama to bring back a van loaded with funny money, but things start to go wrong the moment he steps on board, requiring Chris and his crew to stall, improvise and negotiate every inch of the way, while back home his wife (Kate Beckinsale) and best friend (Ben Foster) do their best to hold off the increasingly impatient bad guys.
Wahlberg’s gotten pretty good at the stone-faced hero thing, and his simmering presence suits the film’s tone nicely. There’s also the admirably adult sense that everything that’s happening is grounded in believable human psychology Chris isn’t the only character who’s put himself in harm’s way to correct a mistake.
Since the script makes sure Chris is always the most competent person in the room, the ever-mounting complications start to feel a little ridiculous about an hour in, but Kormákur keeps the action moving so swiftly that I didn’t really mind.
With the exception of an outsized armoured-car robbery sequence, Contraband plays out on an admirably modest scale, which makes for an interesting change of pace after the IMAX-sized spectacle of the Mission: Impossible and Sherlock Holmes sequels.
normw@nowtoronto.com
