Contraband - Gefährliche Fracht

By the time the van was hijacked, I was just checking off boxes in which I’d written the characters and situations I'd seen elsewhere. Not that it's any different from that point on, but then the protagonists are in real trouble and it starts to take on the kind of gradation you expect from a genre film like this. It gets bonus points for the well-used handheld camera, but I take some away for the characters, which, except for Wahlberg's, lack a better profile. 3 ½. [I won't remember the film in a week.] (13.04.2012)

Baltasar Kormákur quite often commutes between his native country – Iceland – and America, where they are happy to invest not only money into his films but also provide interesting actors. Hats off for what he has been able to do over the years because few European directors can commute like him every other year. It’s just a pity that Contraband didn’t interest me at all in the story. Mark Wahlberg plays a classic badass, whom you just have to look in the face and it’ll be clear to you what will happen in the next few seconds. But all that contraband is a process that flew completely over my head. Whether it’s the guy who fucked it all up (that one in particular) or the plan with the money and transporting it. Anyway, I admit that it was filmed very well. And the fact that the camera is shaking here and there, in this case, doesn’t really hurt. It wasn’t that bad. (16.10.2015)

Ein harter nordischer Wind wehte durch Hollywood, um blitzschnell auf Raumtemperatur aufgewärmt zu werden. Ein sesselpupsendes Familiendrama über einen Mann, der zwar ein Verbrecher ist, jedoch ein guter Vater und Ehemann, ein überkombinierter Heist (in einem Adjektivwörterbuch könnte dieser Film dank dieser Eigenschaft könnte genau dieses Merkmal darstellen) und eine simple Moral, bei der sich letzten Endes etwas so Idiotisches ergibt, wie: Stehlen zahlt sich aus und ist auch noch cool. Kormákur ist ein solider Regisseur, in Contraband gibt es ein paar solide Szenen zu sehen, jedoch ansonsten ist dieser Streifen ein beängstigendes Beispiel dafür, wie Drive hätte aussehen können, sofern Refn sich dessen nicht angenommen hätte würde. Es ist eben ein uncharakteristisches Spektakel, bei welchem Sie die typisch nordische Art der Aufnahmen "über Hindernisse hinweg" sowie die ewige rohe Neuausrichtung vergessen werden. Die Form hat keinerlei Chance, diese naive Sache zu abzubremsen. Der Isländer hat es schlichtweg nicht geschafft, sein raues Gesicht beizubehalten und sich dem Mainstream unterworfen. Sinnlos. (09.01.2012)

Decent craftwork with some excellent moments. Wahlberg’s acting has become bearable, Foster gives a standard performance and Ribisi really enjoys playing that sneaky asshole. The nearer it gets to the end, the more creaky it is, but so what? The main thing is that it’s fun! The entertainment value is constant. (27.08.2012)

Standard stuff. The main shootout is not great, the camera is bad, the story is solid, but the execution and theme are basically average, sometimes even trashy. During the introduction, I hoped that the Miami Vice-style setup wouldn't be just a few initial shots, that there would be a lot of similarly perfectly tuned elements throughout the film, but that was not the case, unfortunately. There are a few bright moments, but otherwise, it's just average, pure and simple, with Wahlberg playing his typical tough guy again. (06.06.2012)

Contraband - Gefährliche Fracht hat mir deutlich weniger gefallen als 2 Guns. Actiongeladen und spannend war das zusammen vielleicht zwanzig Minuten. Auf Marky Mark lasse ich nichts kommen, aber ich merke immer mehr, dass er ein Schauspieler mit einem Ausdruck ist, was ich einigen Schauspiellegenden vorwerfe, und bei ihm drücke ich ein Auge zu. Doch erneut ist er von Ben und Kate umgeben, die nie enttäuschen. Nun, und das Ende war so stupide, dass ich nicht glauben mag, dass es ein Isländer gedreht hat. Als einzig vernünftige Erklärung erscheint mir ein Diktat der Produzenten, was in den USA nicht überrascht. Aha, es handelt sich um ein amerikanisches Remake, wie ich gelesen habe. Das erklärt viel. (14.09.2014)

The audience will once again wonder if Mark Wahlberg can act. The accent he has, which is apparently Bostonian, sounds like a foreigner, perhaps from France or maybe Russia, in some scenes. Mark definitely has charisma, but sometimes he ruins it by forgetting to act. The emotions he expresses in some moments of the film seem pre-fabricated and almost robotic. In the film "Contraband," he played a former thief who is now reformed and has a family, but because of one of his family members, his brother-in-law, he is forced to save a life by getting involved in something illegal again. Lately, we have seen a flood of similar films. Where does Contraband fit in? Probably somewhere between "The Italian Job" and "Man on the Edge". The first one mentioned is the most well-crafted of the three, the second the least. "Contraband" is somewhere in between. Some performances in this film are truly excellent (Ben Foster, Kate Beckinsale, and of course Giovanni Ribisi, who is not funny for a moment, on the contrary, he is in a role we usually don't know him for and he is great), but Wahlberg is definitely not the one carrying it. The story is quite simple and we don't get any masterful planning, but it flows quite well, although some of the action scenes are a bit shallow and inserted just for the sake of being action-packed. However, don't expect anything groundbreaking here. It's simply a fairly well-made heist film that cannot compete with "Ocean's Eleven", but when you can't find it at your video store, this is an acceptable substitute. Considering the original film "From Reykjavik to Rotterdam" was not even 90 minutes long, this American version is a bit stretched out. More: http://www.filmovy-denik.cz/2012/07/mistrovsky-plan-nerdi-bel-ami-susi.html (24.02.2013)