The Contractor
Chris Pine turns to corporate espionage when he’s dumped by the army that he served so selflessly.
The calm before the storm: Chris Pine, Eva Ursescu, Ben Foster, Nicolas Noblitt and Tyner Rushing
James Harper (Chris Pine) is a God-fearing, loving family man who has served four combat rotations in five years. He pounds the sidewalks round Fort Bragg, pushes his body to the limit and when he gets home he plays with his young son, Jack. He is a Good American. And his family is everything. Then, following a drug test, he is honourably discharged from the army with neither health care nor a pension. Due to a debilitating knee injury, Harper has been taking steroids for the pain, which is apparently against the military code. He now has nothing but his reputation and the household bills are already mounting up. He is then offered a job “babysitting corporates” in Berlin, a posting that comes with an advance of $50,000. What could possibly go wrong?
In pre-production, The Contractor was known as Violence of Action. However, neither title is particularly distinctive, reflecting a mind-set that distinction is not what The Contractor is all about. If the film had been released fifty years ago, it would have been called a B-movie and as such it fits the bill nicely. Efficiently assembled by the Swedish director Tarik Saleh, The Contractor avoids the worst excesses of the genre, aiming for a cold, streamlined demeanour, punching beneath the weight of a Bourne, but gripping enough as the story ricochets across a number of locales. Chris Pine is the A-lister stuck in B-movie roles, as witnessed in his last Amazon Prime release, All the Old Knives. His penetrating blue eyes will always betray him. He’s just too goddamn handsome to play a disfigured supervillain or an emaciated heroin addict. But he does try: he sang up a storm opposite Anna Kendrick in Into the Woods, and was first-rate in David Mackenzie’s masterful Hell or High Water (2016).
In the latter he and Ben Foster played brothers who broke into a Texan bank. Here, they play brothers-in-arms who break into a Berlin research facility. On both occasions they are desperate men out of their depth and yet display an easy camaraderie. They are to drama what Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly are to comedy, with Foster sharing the former’s unhinged intensity. It’s a shorthand that drives the drama forward smoothly until, inevitably, the nuts on the well-oiled corporate machine start to come undone. “Capture,” states Foster, “is not an option.” So, between shots of Chris Pine’s naked torso, the film zips between LA, Atlanta, Berlin and Bucharest with consummate ease, gently tightening the screws on the suspense. Not that you’ll remember a frame of it a week from now.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Chris Pine, Ben Foster, Gillian Jacobs, Eddie Marsan, J.D. Pardo, Kiefer Sutherland, Florian Munteanu, Nina Hoss, Amira Casar, Fares Fares, Dustin Lewis, Sander Thomas, Tyner Rushing, Nicolas Noblitt, Eva Ursescu, Toby Dixon, Dean Ashton, Brian Lafontaine, Cory Scott Allen.
Dir Tarik Saleh, Pro Basil Iwanyk and Erica Lee, Ex Pro Chris Pine, Screenplay J.P. Davis, Ph Pierre Aim, Pro Des Roger Rosenberg, Ed Theis Schmidt, Music Alex Belcher, Costumes Louize Nissen, Sound Fredrik Dalenfjäll and Fredrik Jonsäter.
Thunder Road Films/30West-Paramount Pictures/STX International.
103 mins. USA. 2021. US Rel: 1 April 2022. UK Rel: 6 May 2022. Available on Amazon Prime. Cert. 15.
