Contraband (Universal)
Rated R for violence, pervasive language and brief drug use.
Starring Mark Wahlberg, Kate Beckinsale, Caleb Landry Jones, Ben Foster, Giovanni Ribisi, Lukas Haas, J.K. Simmons, Diego Luna, Robert Wahlberg, Jaqueline Fleming.
Written by Aaron Guzikowski, based on the Icelandic film Reykjavik-Rotterdam by Arnaldur Indriðason and Óskar Jónasson.
Directed by Baltasar Kormákur.
GRADE: B-
REVIEW:
A few American remakes of foreign films turn out pretty good. Others? Not so much. An example of a good adaptation is The Departed, based on a Chinese film called Internal Affairs. A bad adaptation might be Dinner For Schmucks. The sad reality is, there are more misses than hits when it comes to such retreads, and I'm not really sure why that happens, but perhaps it's a combination of cultural differences and laziness. Most of the time, the nuances of an original are lost in translation. Such is the case for Contraband, a U.S. remake of a film from Iceland called Reykjavik-Rotterdam.
Mark Wahlberg stars as John, a reformed smuggler New Orleans family man with a beautiful wife (Kate Beckinsale) and two young sons. Even while John lives a crime-free life, his brother Andy (Caleb Landry Jones) continues the family smuggling tradition and finds himself in trouble with a gangster named Briggs (Giovani Ribisi) for dumping a shipment of cocaine during a customs raid on the ship where he works. Briggs threatens to kill Andy, John and his family if he's not reimbursed for his coke shipment, causing John to make one more smuggling run (of counterfeit money) to save them.
John recruits a team of smuggling buddies to accompany him to Panama where he will pick up the funny money and arrange to bring it back on the ship of Captain Camp (J.K. Simmons), a man with few scruples and no love for John.
In Panama, things go bad for John and his team, as they are forced to join an armored truck robbery in order to get the counterfeit bills. In the meantime, John's best friend Sebastian (Ben Foster) keeps tabs on his wife in New Orleans - but does he have other motives?
Contraband is a decent film that tends to drag in the middle as John and his team get sidetracked by a host obstacles. The resolution of the plot also seems to be filled with a lot of convenient devices and coincidental circumstances that stretch the boundaries of belief. It's a little too reminiscent of the 2000 version of Gone in 60 Seconds (another Ribisi film) as well.
Even with Contraband's obvious flaws, the film's action is interesting at times as is the performance of Ribisi as the quirky, short-tempered villain.
It's worth a rental, but not much else.
