IslandGuru Who payed the critics

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Bessie Smyth Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Lunaroseice This movie was not what I expected from Wesley Snipes. I started to get disappointed. But the more I watched, the more I realize that it was mis-marketed.It is not an action movie so much as a movie that has some action in it. The dialogue is sparse which means the actors really have to work that much harder. Directing wasn't that bad but the shoot-out with strobe lights was a poor idea. The longer I watched, the more I wondered if this is actually a British film rather than an American. The tone was much different.This movie deserves a better rating than people have given it. Try watching it without thinking of it as an action movie and you may like it more. It is really an excellent film.

Ross-451 The US appear to run the UK police who all run around armed to the teeth and did you know that CID officers change into uniform when they stop work and go down the pub! This has got to be one of the most unrealistic films with the worst portrayal of "real" UK police that has ever been foisted on the unsuspecting public. I can see that Mr Snipes might have needed the money to pay his back tax bill but what the heck a good actor like Charles Dance was doing in it is a mystery.Worse than the worse low budget "B" film of the 50's. An hour and a half of suicide and time I will never get back.Avoid it like the veritable plague.

siderite Having just seen Hit-man, another film of the type "good hit-man fights bad hit men", but incredibly stupid, The Contractor seemed to me of incredibly unexpected good nature. The main character is human, fallible, vulnerable. He does his job as well as possible given the circumstances, he tries to save his skin as well as possible and when a stern "Moscow rules: if the mission fails you're already dead" assignment comes his way he feels no confusion when deciding he should stay very much alive, no matter the mission.Of course, in all this gem of a script idea there is also bad screen play, occasional bad acting and things that make no sense. It's like a good machine without oil, everything is well made but not really working. The action scenes are shaky and amateurish for a Snipes movie, but then again, the point was not the action or the technical prowess of the hit men, but the fact that they are human beings.At first I thought it was going to be another Nikita/Leon ripoff, but the girl story arch was sensible and reasonably original. The ending was a little bit forced, too.Bottom line: in the abysmal hell of bad written hit-man action movies, this obscure film is a real gem in the mud and a reminder that the budget is not really important, nor the genre of the film, but the very real effort of actually trying to make a movie, not just money.

nicolovvassil I read in the papers that W.Snipes was broke so no wonder he would take parts in low budget projects like The Contractor.He is just the next action star to join a growing club:the penniless action stars of the 90s (Van Damme,Segal,Lundgren,Snipes). Here he stars the lead in a cheap action flick which was shot in Bulgaria( we are supposed to believe that the location is London, like only a complete moron would buy that)The story is the one of 1000 other movies: retired special forces good guy gets hired by the government again to do a wet job- after that government wants to get rid of him- good guy gets away after killing bad guys (was that a spoiler? guess not!) The star of the movie: the little girl (Eliza Bennett) outperforms everybody else of the cast!!!One star is for her plus one star for eye candy Lena Headey, makes 2 stars. Only for die hard Snipes fans!Everybody else:avoid!