Chris Farraday is not the kind of man you want to cross. He is a family man, a husband, a father. He is also a former smuggler with a skill set that nobody wants him to use again. That is the setup for Contraband, a 2012 action thriller directed by Baltasar Kormákur and starring Mark Wahlberg. It is a remake of the 2008 Icelandic film Reykjavík-Rotterdam, and it trades that chilly landscape for the neon and humidity of the American coast.
The film opens in New Orleans, where Chris Farraday lives a quiet life with his wife Kate and their two children. That peace ends when they learn that Kate’s brother, Andy, has gotten mixed up with a drug lord named Tim Briggs. Andy panicked during a U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspection and dumped his illicit cargo into the Mississippi River. Briggs is not amused. He threatens to kill Chris’s family if Andy does not pay him back.
Chris has a plan. He will smuggle $10 million in fake bills from Panama into the United States. He asks his former partner, Sebastian Abney, to fund the scheme. Sebastian owns a construction business. Chris joins a cargo ship with Andy, Danny and Davis. The plan is simple: Chris creates a diversion on the ship so Andy, Danny and he can leave and retrieve the fake bills.
The setup works because it is personal. Briggs is not just a criminal. He is a threat to Chris’s wife and children. That makes every decision Chris makes feel earned. The film spends its early scenes establishing the stakes. The audience knows exactly what is at risk.
The performances are strong. Wahlberg plays Chris as steady and controlled, a man who knows exactly what he is getting into. Kate Beckinsale plays Kate with the right mix of fear and resolve. Ben Foster’s Sebastian is the wildcard, a man who owes money to a gangster named Jim Church and is secretly working with Briggs. Caleb Landry Jones plays Andy with the right mix of panic and loyalty. Giovanni Ribisi plays Tim Briggs as a man who is not playing games. Diego Luna plays Gonzalo, the crime lord who is unstable and dangerous. J.K. Simmons plays Captain Camp, a cop who is always one step behind.
The middle stretch drags. Once the fake bills are on the ship, the film spends too much time on side trips. Chris agrees to help Gonzalo rob an armored car in exchange for the bills. The heist is tense, but it feels like padding. The film keeps adding threads instead of cutting them. By the time the van, the fake bills and the Jackson Pollock painting are all loaded onto the cargo ship, the story has lost some of its focus.
Sebastian’s betrayal is the engine of the second half. He hears that Chris plans to dump the cocaine and tells Briggs to threaten Kate. That forces Chris to make a choice. The tension builds, but the pacing suffers.
The armored car robbery is the best sequence in the film. It is loud, chaotic and well-choreographed. Wahlberg and Danny fight their way through the chaos. The heist delivers what the trailer promised. It is the moment where the film earns its action label.
The problem is that the heist happens too late. By the time it arrives, the audience has spent an hour watching characters circle each other. The payoff should have come sooner.
Contraband is a remake, and it is a faithful one. The Icelandic original had a smaller scope, but the core idea is the same: a man who has left crime behind is pulled back in to save his family. Kormákur and screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski keep the basic shape intact. The film is not a slavish copy. It is a bigger, louder version of the same story.
The comparison is worth making:
| Element | Reykjavík-Rotterdam | Contraband |
|---|---|---|
| Setting | Iceland | New Orleans / Panama |
| Scale | Smaller, intimate | Larger, commercial |
| Tone | Calm, atmospheric | Fast, tense |
| Lead | Different actor | Mark Wahlberg |
The remake loses some of the intimacy of the original. It gains spectacle. That trade-off is visible in every scene.
The cast is strong across the board. Wahlberg’s performance anchors the film. Foster and Ribisi are both excellent. The supporting players, including Simmons and Landry Jones, do solid work in smaller roles. The chemistry between Chris and Kate holds the film together when the script stumbles.
The script is the weak link. The story is too long for its own good. The heist should have been the centerpiece. Instead, it arrives as a relief after an hour of setup. The film could have been tightened by twenty minutes without losing any of its menace.
The film has three things going for it:
- A strong lead performance from Wahlberg
- A tense setup that keeps the stakes high
- A thrilling armored car heist that delivers
It also has two weaknesses:
- A middle section that drags on
- A script that overexplains itself
The film is watchable, but it is not a great film.
Trailer, via Universal Pictures.
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