They include the ship's cook Tarik (LUCKY JOHNSON), engineer Igor (OLAFUR DARRI OLAFSSON), and newly married crewman Danny (LUKAS HAAS).īack home, though, Briggs terrorizes Kate repeatedly to put pressure on Chris not to screw up. To settle Andy's debt, Chris enlists the help of his best friend, Sebastian (BEN FOSTER), and his jailed father, Bud (WILLIAM LUCKING), to assemble a boat crew who will sail to Panama and return to Louisiana with millions in counterfeit money. However, he is enticed into pulling one last job when his brother-in-law, Andy (CALEB LANDRY JONES), botches a drug deal for a vicious New Orleans crime boss named Tim Briggs (GIOVANNI RIBISI). He now has a successful business installing security alarms in people's homes. PLOT: Chris Farraday (MARK WAHLBERG) was once a great smuggler, but he abandoned his life of crime to live the quiet life with his wife, Kate (KATE BECKINSALE), and their two young sons. QUICK TAKE: Crime Thriller: A former smuggler is enticed to do one last job to pay off his brother-in-law's debt to a New Orleans criminal. The cast is rounded out with the likes of Lukas Haas, Ben Foster ( Alpha Dog, The Mechanic) and JK Simmons ( Juno, Law & Order).Īpart from the largely outstanding cast, the plot twists are finely tuned to be surprising yet not confusing, and those are the two elements which salvage Contraband from the wreck of predictable movies.Ĭontraband's superb casting and its matte finish make it a fine way to spend two hours munching popcorn.(2012) (Mark Wahlberg, Kate Beckinsale) (R) The delightful Diego Luna pops up halfway through the movie as a young trigger-happy gang leader whose ego is slightly too big for his getaway car. He even adopted a snake-like quality in his pronunciation to add to the drama. Giovanni Ribisi transforms into a greasy, positively frightening character as Briggs. But what is a bad boy without a pretty girl to fight for, hey? Her character is perfectly perfunctory. I can't decide whether the role did Kate Beckinsale a disservice or if it was the other way around. ![]() Chris assembles a dream team – a much less glamorous Ocean's 11 – to help him move millions of dollars into the country on a container ship in order to settle Andy’s debt to Briggs.Ĭhris's wife Kate (played by Kate Beckinsale) plays a connective role, pulling many of the characters together, but she has one facial expression throughout the entire film. When Chris’s brother-in-law Andy (Caleb Landry Jones) botches a drug deal, there’s a real fear that drug boss Tim Briggs (Giovanni Ribisi) is going to kill him. ![]() ![]() There aren't many flashy, high-octane scenes, and a lot of the story goes down on an unglamorous container ship. This inner struggle is mirrored in the fast-changing moods in the film which are used to plot the progression of the story.Ĭontraband requires the audience to be present and concentrate. Of course it's got something to do with those Calvin Klein ads of yesteryear, but he always seems to pull of his roles with exceptional ease.Ĭontraband makes use of Wahlberg's natural badboy streak and he's totally convincing as a family man who's trying to do the right thing while yearning for the thrill, danger and satisfaction of pulling off a job that requires him to smuggle counterfeit bills from Panama back into the US. There's one reason I was keen to review this movie: Mark Wahlberg. When Kate’s younger brother gets into trouble with a local drug dealer, Chris heads off to Panama for one last job to bail his brother-in-law out. Chris Farraday (Mark Wahlberg) was once a first-rate smuggler, but he gave it all up to go legit and start a family with his wife Kate (Kate Beckinsale).
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