Written by James Rawson, New Media, DFI

Film: Contraband
Director: Baltasar Kormákur
Stars: Mark Wahlberg, Giovanni Ribisi, Ben Foster
Running time: 110 mins

When a film opens with Mark Wahlberg retiring from a life of jet-setting, high stakes international crime and setting up his own home security company, you can guess that he probably won’t be spending the next 100 minutes installing CCTV and offering advice on which Yale locks are best for a garden conservatory. And you would be right. There are very few suprises in ‘Contraband’, the highly formulaic and forgettably entertaining action thriller from Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur, opening in Doha this week.

Chris Farraday (Mark Wahlberg) is living the good life: leaving behind a career of drugs, car and currency smuggling, he has decided to go straight, set up his own business and settle down with his beautiful wife Kate (Kate Beckinsale) and their two boys. Unfortunately for the Farradays, Kate’s kid brother Andy (Caleb Landry Jones) has got himself into a spot of bother during a botched smuggling job, and Andy has to replace the lost bounty or else drugs baron Tim Briggs (Giovanni Ribisi) will start going after his family. To pay off Andy’s debts and save his loved ones from the death warrant hanging over their head, Chris must do one last job. And where better to go than Panama, currently the home of $10 million worth of fake bank notes waiting to be collected and smuggled into the US on an international cargo ship. Using his old connections in the underworld, Chris puts together a motley crew to sail to Panama and pick up the cash, while leaving his family under the protection of best bud Sebastian (Ben Foster).

While Chris stomps around Central America, he goes through pretty much every ‘one last job’ cliché that Hollywood has to offer. From the moustachioed crime lord (Diego Luna) to the gun happy local police force, everything that happens south of the Panama Canal is enjoyable fun, if you’re a fan of the genre, but will feel tired and derivative to audiences hoping for a bit more than action/thriller fluff.

The best scenes that the film has to offer occur between the fantastic supporting cast assembled around Wahlberg, most of whom stay back in the US. Giovanni Ribisi (still probably best known as Phoebe’s brother in ‘Friends’) is all ticks and twitches as a criminal middle-man trying to get his slice of the smuggling-cartel pie while still trying to raise his young daughter and protect her from the dangerous lifestyle that surrounds him. Ben Foster (a highly watchable actor who deserves much better roles than he gets) gives the strongest performance as the duplicitous Sebastian, struggling with a sidekick complex as his best friend gets the beautiful wife and saves the day. Their subplots almost make you wish the screenplay had cut out Wahlberg’s two-dimensional character and spent its time exploring the relationships of those around him. But this is Hollywood, after all.

‘Contraband’ has already gone to the top of the box office stateside, and I’m sure will continue to find financial success around the world. January is a notoriously weak month for cinema releases, hanging in the shadows of the awards baiting films of November and December, so Contraband might be the best that the multiplexes have to offer this week. Just don’t expect to remember a thing about it after you leave the cinema.