Giovanni Ribisi is the heavy. Let me pause a sec while that sinks in. At his apartment, he has the drop on Mark Wahlberg until Marky Mark remembers a sweet dance move from the 90s and turns the tables. And then Briggs’ (Ribisi’s) daughter emerges from the apartment and we get a “daddy’s just playing” moment. Welcome to the 21st century, where even the slimy villains are family men. “Just go back to bed, honey, daddy has to do some fingernail removal and then he’ll read you a story …”
Were Contraband a smarter movie, I would put it in the category of cautionary tale because the characters are so stupid that I wouldn’t plan to make nachos with them, much less pull off a million dollar caper. Actually, it’s not so much that they’re stupid, as nobody seems to act in his best interests (or the interests of anybody else), which I think we can agree is a severe form of stupidity.
Chris Farraday’s (Wahlberg’s) brother-in-law is forced to dump his cache during a drug smuggling –for lack of a better word, we’ll call it an “operation”, Ok? The baddies still want their goodies, and put Marky Mark on the hook for it. In a bar, Farraday discovers the bad guys have no payment plan option. This seems a tad short-sighted – I mean nobody expects a lien on assets or wages garnishment, but zero tolerance for a guy who wasn’t even involved? And, hey, why don’t drug lords have some sort of collateral system to insure payment in these instances? And while I’m at it, drug running is sooooo 1985. Want to get rich in this economy? Get the government to relax regulations, then get idiots to make really bad investments and bet against them. Odds that you’ll see jail time are still 0%! Luckily, Mark is a former expert smuggler himself and can get back the debt in a weekend. No sweat.
That isn’t enough for Giovanni, who feels the need for insurance by offering some threats. See, now here’s where Contraband loses me: you have acceptance of debt and offer of repayment both by a third party. Why make the terms tough on the third party? What does that gain you? Oh yeah. It’s a movie. That was just the onset of the bad writing. Farraday’s plan to run funny money in from Panama runs afoul when 1) henchman #1 can’t be bothered to protect his wife and children properly 2) henchman #2 cannot follow the “don’t drain the oil too much” request 3) henchman #3 doesn’t bother checking who is captaining the ship 4) henchman #4 couldn’t close the doors on the crate being loaded onto the ship thus announcing to all exactly which box held the surprise cream filling 5) henchman #5 didn’t bother checking on the integrity of the counterfeit dollars 6) henchman #6 (the brother-in-law, the one of whom Marky Mark is settling the debt) simply takes off with the money at the drop leaving Farraday to attempt vacating a drug lord’s warehouse with a van full of funny money but without a weapon and without paying.
It’s just so hard to find good help these days.
Now naturally, this particular criminal DOES have a payment plan. Just so happens there’s an armored car job to be pulled within the one hour time frame in port while they are in Panama City and he needs some more guys. Are you appalled yet? At this point, Contraband has actually offended – no set of criminals could be this stupid, nor plots this convenient to make this work.
I loved this moment of idiocy: the Panama gang decides their heist calls for camouflage in the form of duct tape wrapped several times around the head. “Tell me, Señor, what is a ‘ski mask’?” At that point, I think you just might consider that getting gunned down in a firefight might be superior to removing the tape painlessly.
Did I mention this is one of those films in which executions don’t happen? People die in the course of action scenes only. Everybody has a gun, but nobody uses one. Shame, because that might solve a whole lot of debt problems. I give Contraband kudos for one and exactly one element: after the heist of a Jackson Pollock painting, the product is consistently mistaken for a drop cloth. Yup, that’s pretty much what I think of Pollock’s work, too. Unfortunately, Contraband merits the same.
Rated R, 109 Minutes
D: Baltasar Kormákur
W: Aaron Guzikowski
Genre: “I wanted to write a crime story without knowing anything about crime.”
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Giovanni Ribisi’s immediate family
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Offended professional criminals
