From the small-screen gunfights of Strike Back to recent films like Without Remorse and One Shot, tactical action has been in vogue for a good decade or so. What might have once seemed like a layer of realism atop Hollywood shootouts can often feel like a cookie-cutter approach to action nowadays, a veneer of gritty authenticity that can mask failings elsewhere. And indeed, The Contractor does jolt to life when its guns are checking corners or rattling off suppressed rounds. That energy becomes sorely needed too, when the rest of the film feels less like a new studio release headlined by a major star and more like a derivative direct-to-video actioner.
With a grizzled Chris Pine in the lead and the always great Ben Foster co-starring, viewers might be reminded of their earlier project together, David Mackenzie’s neo-western crime drama Hell or High Water. It’s probably safe to assume that The Contractor won’t be repeating that film’s Oscars run, even if director Tarik Saleh seems to have lofty thematic aims with The Contractor. For about half its runtime, The Contractor is languidly mired in drama, caught between criticizing broken systems that leaves an ex-soldier struggling with debts and indulging in dreamy flashbacks that seem to border between cynicism and jingoism. Pine brings a subtle weariness and intensity to his discharged Special Forces operative James Harper, humanizing his protagonist through performance than the script ever does.
As debts and family strain escalate, old unit buddy Mike Denton (Ben Foster) arrives with a lucrative opportunity for James: put his skills to use for secret black-ops operations. Kiefer Sutherland isn’t in many scenes as operation head Rusty, but his hardbitten gravitas makes his pitch of helping soldiers who have been forgotten, abandoned, and ignored ring true. Soon James is in Berlin with a shady tactical unit, on a wetwork mission involving a rogue scientist; from then on, The Contractor succumbs to a cavalcade of cliches and by-the-numbers set-pieces. Questions of profit over country, the line between soldier and mercenary, handlers with insidious motives, the dark truths behind the mission, and so on: anyone who’s seen a Bourne film or any number of Bourne-inspired films can see the plot swerves well before the movie brings them to the forefront.
It’s not long until gunfire and blows are being exchanged across Berlin; The Contractor ends up faring far better in its action sequences than in its dramatic revelations. Saleh shoots the film’s three major confrontations with an eye for chaotic clarity and stark violence. A night shootout in the forest has a scrappy cornered intensity, a run-&-gun scramble through busy streets feels suitably frantic and kinetic, a house siege unfolds with intense desperate momentum. Pine’s physicality shines during these sequences – equally coiled,strategic, and vulnerable – particularly during a fierce sewer brawl that, for a brief moment, pushes The Contractor into pulpy action territory.
But in the end, The Contractor doesn’t boast enough set-pieces – nor distinct enough confrontations – to please genre fans, while its undercooked drama will underwhelm those looking for a more thematic film. It’s a film that feels torn between those two aims, and only achieves middling fare that might not appeal to either audience.
Photo courtesy of STXfilms
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