CONTRABAND (Baltasar Kormakur, 2011)

-

CONTRABAND works best when you think of the technical aspects: the icebreaker aerial shots, the restless camera when the characters are having a conversation, and the relaxed pacing. For a film about a smuggling, and eventual heist, CONTRABAND is pretty quiet. Thank God Baltasar Kormakur is no Michael Bay.

One can't help but liken CONTRABAND to "GONE IN SIXTY SECONDS", a film produced by Jerry Bruckheimer starring Nicolas Cage. CONTRABAND shares similar plot jumpoff and resolution with GONE, and they both feature Giovanni Ribisi in opposing roles (Ribisi is the victim that sets things in motion in the latter film). Mark Wahlberg is the Nicolas Cage character who is a retired career criminal forced back in the game due to family involvement in crime. Yes, the story isn't exactly original.

CONTRABAND also has that ITALIAN JOB feel (a movie which also stars Mark Wahlberg). Most of the suspense are layered during the planning stage, and while CONTRABAND piles up twist after another towards the climax, there is not enough poetic justice. Mark Wahlberg's character is just too self-righteous to do anything worthy of cinematic merit to the bad guys. There was a time when antiheroes used to be so badass any scum of the Earth will cower in fear, like when Clint Eastwood was still wielding his Magnum, or when Steven Seagal used to make movies that did not induce vomiting. 

In fairness, some twists were enjoyable. Inconceivable, but enjoyable. CONTRABAND's pitfall is that it tries to speed everything up towards the second half, where time orientation and logic cease to exist. At lest Diego Luna is fun to watch as a Panamanian counterfeiter. The masking tape is a pretty classy and edgy touch.

I wanted to like CONTRABAND. It is a good enough escapist flick, but it could have been more. Kate Beckinsale plays the wife in this movie who is put there as the damsel in distress, designed to make the hero angrier, hence speed up the plot.

RATING: 2/5

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ANINO SA LIKOD NG BUWAN (Jun Lana, 2015)

-
Image
* English title "Shadow behind the Moon" The best term to describe Jun Lana's latest film would be a cinematic charade- a game of identities, of motives, of suppressed passions, and of uncertainty. Or the film equivalent of a Russian doll, if you will. "Anino sa Likod ng Buwan" only has three characters- husband and wife Nando (Anthony Falcon) and Emma (LJ Reyes) and military man Joel (Luis Alandy). What started as a seemingly routine banter among friends gradually and intensely escalated into an examination of society, where the definition of immorality is blurred during a time of insurgency.  And in fact, the film does discuss the subject of immorality from various paradigms. When does adultery become acceptable, and to whom? Is sexual liberation more heinous than murder? Why is immorality always a double standard? The film plays out the ideas in endless games. Or are they really games at all? Lana could have stopped there, but he didn...
Read more

TUHOG (Jeffrey Jeturian)

-
Image
Film within a film-structured movies are always interesting watch. Not only do they provide a much-needed deconstruction of form and content of cinema itself, but also that much-needed emotional punch a cinephile would surely love.  Like in BAD EDUCATION (Almodovar, 2004), we witness the characters tell the back story via montage, as if we are part of the cast of characters watching an actual movie. The form was successful in evoking pain and regret, and also of empathy. In TUHOG, Jeffrey Jeturian and screenwriter Bing Lao tackles sensational media in the Philippines, especially in cinema. The film opens as a film producer hears a pitch for a possible movie- a story of a grandfather who rapes his own granddaughter.  The director of the film soon after visits the victim of the crime, Floring (Ina Raymundo). Coercing both she and her mother, Perla (Irma Adlawan) to sell them the movie rights to their story, we witness as exploitation cinema unfolds. To think of it, capitaliz...
Read more

BIGKIS (Neal Tan, 2014)

-
Image
As an advocacy film, BIGKIS (INTERTWINED) gets its message across. The state of maternal healthcare in the Philippines is downright depressing, with mothers seated on the floor of public hospitals due to shortage of beds, medical equipment and hospital staff. The baby better be gaping through the birth canal before the mother receives serious medical attention.  Such social issue has been featured countless times in local documentaries and even in a feature film (2011's BAHAY BATA), but BIGKIS pushes the envelope further by bridging a connection between mother and child by means of breastfeeding, and in doing so, promoting breastfeeding in the process.  As a drama, the film tends to squeeze too much tragedy from the downtrodden lives of its characters that a lot of the dialogue feels staged for us to feel sorry for their countless miseries. Mariel (LJ Reyes), a teenage mother deals with an unwanted pregnancy and worse, the abandonment of her baby's father (Pancho ...
Read more