Boobirt Stylish but barely mediocre overall

SoftInloveRox Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

ottawa_scuba_monkey It was a really good movie ... I thoroughly enjoyed it. The story gets progressively more complicated as the movie continues. Wahlberg does a great job filling the lead role and the bad guy's were good at their roles too.Great action flick!

juneebuggy This was a pretty good heist thriller. I thought the story was unique (although I'm not sure just how feasible it would be) the location too, I haven't seen many movies aboard freighters in the Panama Canal before. The action scenes exciting, the cast more than decent and a pretty great ending, again not sure exactly how "that" all worked out but it was fun.There isn't anything particularly stand out here though, and this is one of those "almost" movies that just falls short. I'm sure I won't remember anything about it a week from now but it was entertaining while I was watching. The cast is excellent, Mark Wahlberg is doing one of his standard roles -tough family guy but Ben Foster, Diego Luna, Giovanni Ribi play some great characters and really sink their teeth in. J.K. Simmons, Kate Beckinsale, & Lukas Haas also impressed.The story follows Chris Farraday as a former smuggler who after going legit and settling into a stable life with his wife and sons finds himself back in the game when his brother in law botches a deal with a ruthless drug lord. In a bid to help save his life and settle the debt Chris finds himself making one last run, which sees him aboard a freighter to Panama where he has set up a counterfeiting deal. Nothing goes according to plan and Farraday faces vicious criminals, corrupt officials and trigger happy hit men in a bid to help his desperate brother in law and wife back home. 1/4/16

philipfoxe I do hope this is the worst film Wahlberg has been in, coz it would be hard to imagine one worse. It is a tiresome, generic, 'last time heist' protagonist reformed crim who has to take on one last job where every conceivable thing goes wrong. You can almost hear the scriptwriters daring each other to put in yet another ridiculous clichéd line. The only good thing is the laughs at how slapstick scene after slapstick scene is piled on top of the last one. Couldn't even make it to the end. Nothing makes sense, people take pointless risks, the nasty dealer is mental ...and so on....Not even sure why this film was made.Never made the big screen in the UK; but then, only the better Hollywood movies do, which tells you something. Even the rip off scene from The Italian Job(original and best) should be funnier, but by then I was slipping into a coma...

Leofwine_draca CONTRABAND is a tale of cross-border drug-smuggling, centred around a tough, everyman character played by the underrated Mark Wahlberg. The film for the most part sidesteps modern-day Hollywood clichés, like shoehorned-in action scenes that add nothing to the storyline and are merely there to give choreographers and special effects guys a chance to earn their keep. For the record, there's only one (relevant) car chase.Instead this is a taut, suspenseful story that plays realistic for the most part, and all the better for it. The truth is that it doesn't bring anything new to the table and the thrills it chronicles are very familiar, but its depiction of the minutiae of the scenario keep it moving merrily along. It also has some suitably unpleasant bad guys to boo at.CONTRABAND also features a cast of former youthful stars who are nowadays moving into more mature roles. Ben Foster and Giovanni Ribisi play to type, but it's good to see Lukas Haas given some proper material and even Kate Beckinsale isn't too shabby. J. K. Simmons stands out in a supporting role as the ship's captain and Diego Luna once again delivers an edgy turn. The film might be no classic but for solid thrills and suspense you could do a lot worse.