Contraband (2012)

I've been postponing since one month the entry for "Contraband", so I told myself better write it on a hurry than not at all. Because I would regret skipping this ...

The movie is somewhere between thriller and action, featuring an apparently overused subject. Chris Farraday (Mark Wahlberg) is a guy with a wife and kids, earning an honest living from his small camera surveillance enterprise. Well ... that's after he retired from successful career in contraband on cargo boats. On which he obviously has to return after his wife's younger brother tries his own skills in smuggling, but not that successfully. And like this we get to the classic story: do just one more bad thing to save the dumb guy who screwed up. However, unlike "the classic story", where after the "one more bad thing" everything goes bad and still somehow also everything turns out ok in the end, here ... the "one more bad thing" generates another "one more bad thing", after which you discover "some more bad things", and accidentally yet another "one more bad thing" happens. And these things keep going like this :) At such a rate, that you start losing hope that you'll get a happy end. But, let's not spoil the ending ;)

The movie is actually a remake of an Icelandic production. Even so, the screenwriter is the same guy who wrote "Prisoners". And this was the first reason to see this movie. I can say it was a good call. The second reason, well ... Kate Beckinsale :) Besides these two aspects, I don't know if there's anything to note. On the other hand, I also don't have anything on the minus side. In the end it's just one of the cases where the story + the way it unrolls is what steals the show, completely ( even with Kate there :) ).

Rating: 4 out of 5