Contraband

(2012)
Yea verily, for I am stupid, and do not learn
By now Im out of excuses for sitting through Kate Beckinsale movies where shes not a vampire. Okay, there are occasional gems Nothing But the Truth really is terrific but by and large most of her films just arent that good (and Ive even sat through drek like Tipppietoes and Whiteout). Throw in todays most boring and limited leading man and I include Jason Statham in that statement Marky Mark and a tired premise the one last heist and really, I cant even convince myself theres ample need to see this movie. Im just hung up on Beckinsale, and as usual when you see a flick for the chick, well, its your own damn fault. The plot? Not that it needs any recapping. Beckinsales little brother (shes even called Kate here, geez, like its a Tony Danza show where they need to call him Tony so he knows when to speak) Andy (Caleb Landry Jones, apparently an upand-comer by his IMDbography, though youd never guess it from this film) gets involved with baaaad drug people, in particular one Briggs (Giovanni Ribisi, in full slimeball mode), and so bro-in-law Chris (Marky Mark), who was the greatest smuggler ever, blah blah blah, has to pull one last heist to square things with the bad guys. Seen it before? Unless youre blind you have, and even then youve heard it on radio dramas. So he pulls a bunch of unlikely maneuvering and gets himself assigned to a ship (even though hes served time for smuggling) and then proceeds to run circles around everyone else in the brains department, which strains credulity even with this slack-jawed group. Most of the crew is in on his fix, excepting the hard-ass captain (J.K. Simmons). Theres also a long and ultimately pointless subplot with a supposed buddy Sebastian (Ben Foster) whos trying to play both sides off the middle, but Fosters not terribly interesting here, not that anyone else is either. Its not only a tired retread, but Chris gets done what he needs to get done not for any logical reason or because he really is smarter, but just because he needs to. He escapes getting caught because the plot demands that he escape, not for any other reason. Theres plenty of suspension of disbelief necessary from a ship that crashes into a dock (and no one at the port says anything about it) to a cartoonish shootout between a Panamanian gangster whom Chris gets involved with and about a hundred police, where every soul in sight is riddled with bullets but Chris and his buddy somehow manage to make it out unscathed. The ludicrous plot holes and ridiculous contrivances would almost be amusing if the plot werent so tired and the acting so sub-standard. Maybe the actors realized they were rehashing tired material and so just phoned it in for a paycheck, but no one here really seems to be making any effort at all. Wahlberg in particular seems almost bored most of the time (so was I, so I get it), only getting a little cranky once or twice when his wife is threatened; Ribisi rages occasionally, but everyone

else seems like theyre just waiting for lunch, or the end of the day. For a heist flick theres a noticeable lack of energy. The ending is really the worst part (yes, I did make it all the way through), a requisite Hollywood happy ending slapped on the end of this tripe so that the morally good bad guy who has just smuggled in millions in counterfeit dollars is rewarded for his undercutting of the US economy with a beach house financed by get this a stolen Jackson Pollock painting that he didnt even know about until the very end of the film. What luck! What unbelievable luck! What Ah, whatever. Its crap. Dont bother, and if you do, well, thats two hours of your life you wont get back. June 7, 2012