Contraband
Universal Pictures | Release Date: January 13, 2012 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
51
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 38 Critic Reviews
Positive:
14
Mixed:
20
Negative:
4
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
Charlotte ObserverRoger MooreJan 12, 2012
A thriller with its share of nail-biting moments. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanJan 11, 2012
Contraband, while often grungy and far-fetched, does keep you watching. And in January, that's recommendation enough. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriJan 16, 2012
The result is that rare Hollywood genre film that earns its intensity rather than forcing it upon you. Read full review
70
MovielineAlison WillmoreJan 12, 2012
It's still an obligingly tense, scruffy addition to the one-last-crime genre. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternJan 12, 2012
It's a genre film, not great art, though there's a good joke about art - a pricey piece of action painting, appropriately enough - but it's a thoroughly satisfying entertainment, and, in this season of lowered expectations, a nice surprise. Read full review
70
TimeMary PolsJan 12, 2012
The interplay between Wahlberg and Foster and then Ribisi is nicely done but the action in and around the cargo ship is where the movie's real fun lies. There is plenty of guy humor. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubNathan RabinJan 12, 2012
Kormákur and his collaborators want to tell a simple story cleanly, efficiently, and with a refreshing dearth of frills. They more or less realize their aspirations because they aim so low. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenJan 11, 2012
Contraband is a tidy little thriller that makes up in execution what it lacks in originality. Read full review
63
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottJan 13, 2012
What we're left with is a movie that is about as nourishing as the Junior Mints and nachos available at the theater snack bar. But, then, many a Friday night dinner has been made of far less. Read full review
63
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanJan 13, 2012
Watching it leaves you feeling less buzzed than jittery and slightly nauseated. If the "Ocean's" movies were martinis, Contraband is a thermos full of coffee. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Stephen ColeJan 12, 2012
Playing a blonde with her roots showing, Beckinsale seems up for a scrap, but the film gives her nothing to do but get clobbered. Read full review
63
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezJan 12, 2012
There's a frothy, almost whimsical undercurrent quietly bubbling beneath the dead-serious story, and it finally bursts to the forefront in the ridiculously happy finale, which argues without the slightest bit of shame that crime sometimes does pay - really, really well. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeWesley MorrisJan 12, 2012
I don't know that a lot of Contraband makes sense. But I'm not sure that it has to. The director Baltasar Kormákur carries the movie off with efficiency, brutality, and humor. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsJan 12, 2012
Wahlberg has the presence, the glower and the laconic line readings to guide us through a mess of pain, painlessly. Read full review
60
Total FilmJamie GrahamMar 18, 2012
Don't expect glamorous outlaws, sunny locales and exotic masterplans – this low-key thriller lifts the rusted lid off an all-too-real world of despairing criminality. Read full review
60
The New YorkerDavid DenbyJan 23, 2012
Two winter-season entertainments -- "Haywire" and Contraband with the minimalist but inexorable Mark Wahlberg -- have no greater ambition than to engage our dreams of behaving badly. Of the two, Contraband is the more absorbing. [30 Jan. 2012, p.79]
60
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeyJan 13, 2012
So super complicated (implausible?) that in the wrong hands it would be laughable. Instead, this very gritty bit of greased action does a decent job of shaking the sluggish out of January. Read full review
60
The New York TimesManohla DargisJan 12, 2012
The absurdity of the story in the largely thrill-free thriller Contraband, its hairpin twists and outrageous coincidences, may keep even hungry action fans away. That's too bad because the story doesn't matter. (It rarely does.) Read full review
60
SlateDana StevensJan 12, 2012
The kind of middling-but-watchable heist thriller that, days after seeing it, already feels like something you caught half of on a plane two years ago. Read full review
60
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzJan 12, 2012
Ribisi has become the go-to guy for movie psychos, giving everything to performances like this one or as Moburg, the dissolute reporter in "The Rum Diary." Read full review
60
Boxoffice MagazinePete HammondJan 12, 2012
This Americanized version of the 2008 Nordic thriller "Reykjavik Rotterdam" transfers the original's gritty, violent action into an entertaining and intense starring role for Mark Wahlberg. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyJan 11, 2012
The lead role of a working class former smuggler who dirties his hands again to save his family fits Mark Wahlberg like a glove. Read full review
60
VarietyJustin ChangJan 11, 2012
This solid if disposable genre exercise maintains a hard-driving line of action and a commitment to one-damned-thing-after-another storytelling that carries it past any number of narrative speedbumps and preposterous detours. Read full review
60
Village VoiceNick PinkertonJan 10, 2012
No one, however, could mistake Contraband for anything but what it is: a shift-job genre movie - not a bad day's work, content to match the blocky trudge of its star rather than attempt panache. Read full review
55
NPRScott TobiasJan 24, 2012
Nothing about it lingers, not even the sulfuric stench of a bum scene or a particularly hammy performance. Read full review
50
Rolling StonePeter TraversJan 13, 2012
Wahlberg could sleepwalk through this role, and does. See this movie and you'll surely follow his lead. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleJan 12, 2012
Let's start by admitting three things: that Contraband is a ridiculous movie, that it wasn't meant to be a ridiculous movie, and that it's an enjoyable movie. One of the things that makes it enjoyable is that it's so ridiculous. Read full review
50
USA TodayClaudia PuigJan 12, 2012
Contraband has a few moments of tension, but it adheres to a predictable heist formula hardly worth trafficking in. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaJan 12, 2012
A big comedown from "The Fighter," Contraband finds Wahlberg in default mode: With his Popeye biceps and broody stares, the actor can do a character like Chris without even thinking about it - and that's what he does here. Read full review
50
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliJan 12, 2012
Contraband is the kind of thriller that offers just enough in the way of effective elements to assemble a two-minute trailer. When it comes to a 110-minute feature, however, the sketchiness of the plotting and the director's lack of sure-handedness sink the project. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertJan 11, 2012
Contraband is based on an Icelandic thriller named "Reykjavik-Rotterdam," which leads you to suspect that neither New Orleans nor Panama City is particularly essential to the plot. That film starred Baltasar Kormakur, who is the director of this one, perhaps as a demonstration that many stars believe they could direct this crap themselves if they ever had the chance. Read full review
40
The GuardianPeter BradshawMar 18, 2012
It's a thriller in which the twists become so absurd that it becomes a kind of caper, but without the humour. Read full review
40
Time OutKeith UhlichJan 14, 2012
The movie amounts to little more than Marky Mark's South American Vacation. Read full review
40
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierJan 12, 2012
Only Wahlberg rises above the muck; everything else here feels buried in concrete. Read full review
30
SalonAndrew O'HehirJan 12, 2012
It's exactly the sort of movie that Hollywood specializes in, the kind which seems on paper as if it ought to be entertaining, but winds up a massive and chaotic drag. Read full review
25
Slant MagazineNick SchagerJan 11, 2012
Heist, swindle, and other like-minded genre films thrive or flounder on the mechanics of their story's dangerously elaborate scheme, a fact ably proven by Contraband, a tale of high-seas smuggling without a clever thought in its leaden, derivative head. Read full review
12
New York PostKyle SmithJan 13, 2012
Contraband aims to be dumb fun but gets only the first half right. Read full review
10
Chicago ReaderBen SachsJan 12, 2012
Several graphically violent scenes of women and children in jeopardy make this, ultimately, beneath contempt. Read full review
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