“The Contractor” (2022)
Disappointing after a very promising beginning
Disappointing after a very promising beginning
Despite both the title and the premise of this film stirring my conspiratorial juices (We, the UK and USA, are perpetually at war but we leave the dirty business now to contractors, guns for hire and mercenaries so there’s plausible deniability of all actions whilst we the public all whistle in the sunshine and refuse to believe our lying eyes that we are at war with tens of nations around the known world), and the first twenty minutes of the film showing the fragile human and family side and the next twenty building up to a “Black Operation” we see every day on the News but believe the lies we’re told about such a mission, then why did this military espionage film leave me disappointed? After forty or so minutes I found that the film and the story had run its course and the remaining hour added nothing more, the intrigue and any suspense was gone and I was disinterested for the remainder of the film.
I bet they don’t put this recommendation on the film poster!
So much for all that.
Here’s a spoiler light taster should you still be intrigued enough to give this film 103 minutes of your time:
“James Harper” (Chris Pine) is/was a Special Forces Ranger in the US Army who struggling with pain from an undeclared knee injury is discharged from the services. Via a brother in arms “Mike Hawkins” (Ben Foster) and to combat mounting debts, he is introduced to “Rusty Haynes (Kiefer Sutherland) who is, like both James and Mike, ex military and now a co-ordinator of secret, clandestine black operations for the Department of Defence. With Al Qaeda intent on a dirty war and “bio-terrorism”, there’s a key job in Germany and a mountain of cash pre and post assignment on offer.
With the addition of the always dependable Eddie Marsan as “Virgil” and co-ordinator of a local safe house, the film as a whole should have taken off at this point but I felt it’d already run out of ideas. Quite the damning statement when considering the three Marquee roles noted above.
“We’re all mercenaries in the end” so says Ben Foster’s well played character early on in the film. From this early promise sprouted a well displayed back story and home life, and the human connection behind the stories that lie (pun intended) behind the headlines. Director Tarik Saleh has made some interesting films in his early career hence far but sadly, The Contractor isn’t one of them.
Thanks for reading. For lengthier spoiler free dissections of films past and present please see my bulging archives or the three most recently published articles linked below:
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“Deep Water” (2022)
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“The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022)
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