4/12/2012

Contraband (2012)

A life of crime can be like a never ending high stakes card game with many ways to play and many ways to pay; but once started very few are ever able to cash out or fold and just walk away.

Chris Farraday (Mark Wahlberg) played the game and became a successful smuggler who not only cashed out but was also able to walk away as a legend and vowed to never return.  But he is forced to break his vow when his ‘not so successful’ young broth-in-law, Andy (Caleb Landry Jones) gets caught up in a bad drug run. Andy’s boss, Tim Briggs (Giovanni Ribisi) expects full compensation and he doesn’t care who foots the bill. Briggs makes that clear to Chris when he explained that “family inherits the debt” and he aims to collect even if he has to seek it all the way down line to Chris’s lovely wife, Kate (Kate Beckinsale).  Now Chris has just two weeks to pay Andy’s debt and save his wife and kids, but that kind of money doesn’t come easy, and he’s against the risks of playing with drugs. So he hooks up with some of his old team mates and plans a run out of Panama for counterfeit money.

Unbeknownst to Chris, Andy’s real boss is being pressured for debts of his own and decides to turn up the heat by ordering a threatening house-call for Chris’s family. But Chris is stuck on a Cargo ship at sea with Andy, so he sends Kate into the lion’s den when he tells her to call his best friend, Sebastian (Ben Foster), who arrives like a knight in shining armor to protect her and the boys. Now Chris can concentrate on the job at hand, and it’s a good thing too because Chris knows his shyt, and with a clear mind he realizes that his ordered load of ‘Funny Money’ is just a little too funny. Tough luck, and the clock is ticking but now the plans have changed and he has to go to the Top Dog to get the good stuff before his ship leaves port. Wouldn’t ya know it, Andy runs off with the buy money and leaves Chris hanging for a compromise, yup, Chris can have the funny money for free, but he has to help the Top Dog with a dangerous side-job first!

Well, no problem; I mean after all Chris is considered a legend. Right? So, with cars flipping and bullets flying, he gets back to the ship just in time, and even manages to make it all look as smooth as belting butter. But while back on board, there seems to be major kinks in his finish. Andy made it back too, but he has a forbidden stash of drugs. Captain Camp (J.K. Simmons) has been brought into the game and he knows Chris is making a run on his ship; he threatens to turn Chris over to C.B.P (customs) if he doesn’t surrender the goods. Meanwhile back at home, Kate is in shambles battling Sebastian’s drunken advances.

I must admit, I do enjoy seeing Giovanni Ribisi. But for me, it was just too funny watching him as a Kingpin bully thug.
And although I did really like the way Chris gets back at Captain Camp, I was still in tears over Kate being rolled in that plastic tarp, and then overwhelmed with anger as they began to pour the concrete. All I can say is, God bless cell phones! Ha!! 

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