All the Old Knives
2022
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Apr 1, 2022 · Ultimately, “The Contractor” becomes depressingly routine. The action isn’t interestingly staged, and the plot has less twists in its 100 minutes than your average single episode of a spy drama. It all feels like set-up, getting people ready for a series of a film franchise, but so narratively thin on its own that you could recount the ...
Apr 1, 2022 · Rated: 2.5/4 Apr 8, 2022 Full Review Manuel São Bento MSB Reviews The Contractor is one more generic action flick with a story borrowed directly from the formulaic Hollywood closet, without any ...
- (88)
- Tarik Saleh
- R
- Chris Pine
Mar 31, 2022 · The Contractor. Directed by Tarik Saleh. Action, Thriller. R. 1h 43m. Find Tickets. When you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission ...
- An emotional military thriller.
- What is Chris Pine’s best role?
- Winter 2022 Movies: The 30 Most Anticipated Films
- Verdict
By Adam Bankhurst
Posted: Mar 28, 2022 1:00 pm
The Contractor will be available in theaters and on-demand in the U.S. on April 1, 2022.
For me, there is nothing in this world more important than protecting and providing for those I love most, which is exactly why Chris Pine’s new military drama The Contractor hits so close to home. Even if, like me, you can’t relate to the career background of Pine’s Special Forces Sergeant James Harper, there’s a lot that resonates in his painful story and the unfair cards he’s dealt, and Pine’s performance shines through as he carries the heavy weight of his character’s past on screen. Even though the ending and certain action scenes fell a little short of the high bar set by the rest of the film, James Harper’s journey remains a largely compelling one.
Refreshingly, instead of jumping straight into the action and explosions as some military thrillers tend to do, it spends nearly an hour setting the scene before a single bullet is fired. That time is spent introducing us to Pine’s James, his wife Brianne (Gillian Jacobs), and their son Jack (Sander Thomas), showing a loving family whose happy lifestyle is being threatened by ever-growing debt and an honorable discharge that James wanted no part in. Fans of edge-of-your-seat gun fights need not worry as The Contractor eventually has plenty of them, but the time it takes at the beginning grounds the story, the stakes, and it lends much more meaning to what happens next.
Even scenes that might play out as casual pillow talk demonstrate what’s at stake here, including one where Brianne and James discuss the death of a friend who was also in the military. It is presented as not some shocking revelation, but instead as a regular part of their lives, and the normalcy with which they talk about it makes it ever more disturbing.
Captain James T. Kirk (Star Trek)
Steve Trevor (Wonder Woman)
Lord Devereaux (The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement)
Toby Howard (Hell or High Water)
Jack Ryan (Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit)
Cinderella’s Prince (Into the Woods)
All that aside, the journey to that underwhelming conclusion is an exciting one, filled with mostly solid action, shocking twists, and a mirror that presents us with a simple question: are you sure everything is as it seems? It’s no spoiler to say that the answer is clearly no or we wouldn’t have much of a film, but there are plenty of surprises and adrenaline-filled moments that more than make up for that obvious truth.
On that note, while many of the action scenes carried the heft of a big-budget blockbuster, others weren’t quite as sleek, and briefly took me out of the immersion. There was one close-quarters fight in particular that gave me a headache with how many jump cuts there were, some of which would cut away too fast and return farther ahead than they logically should have. Another scene saw a veteran making a very questionable decision for someone of his experience level followed by a fist fight where a few blows that sounded like they hit the target clearly missed on screen.
The Contractor may not have the greatest action scenes or ending, but its heart – which it wears on its sleeve -- still makes it worth watching. Chris Pine gives a superb performance as a man who’s been forced to make some tough decisions after he was abandoned by the country he spent his whole life serving. It’s an emotional examination of how oth...
Mar 28, 2022 · ‘The Contractor’ Review: Chris Pine Gets Hoodwinked Into Playing for the Bad Guys In Tarik Saleh’s crisp action thriller, Chris Pine plays a discharged U.S. Army officer whose financial ...
- Dennis Harvey
Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 4, 2022. Carla Hay Culture Mix. The Contractor is as generic and dull as its title, with an over-used action-movie plot of a bitter military veteran who ...
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Apr 1, 2022 · The Contractor: Directed by Tarik Saleh. With Chris Pine, Gillian Jacobs, Sander Thomas, Toby Dixon. A discharged U.S. Special Forces sergeant, James Harper, risks everything for his family when he joins a private contracting organization.
