Critic Reviews
51
Metascore
Mixed or Average
positive
14(37%)
mixed
20(53%)
negative
4(11%)
Showing 38 Critic Reviews
Jan 11, 2012
75
Contraband, while often grungy and far-fetched, does keep you watching. And in January, that's recommendation enough.
Jan 12, 2012
70
The interplay between Wahlberg and Foster and then Ribisi is nicely done but the action in and around the cargo ship is where the movie's real fun lies. There is plenty of guy humor.
Jan 12, 2012
70
It's a genre film, not great art, though there's a good joke about art - a pricey piece of action painting, appropriately enough - but it's a thoroughly satisfying entertainment, and, in this season of lowered expectations, a nice surprise.
Jan 12, 2012
70
It's still an obligingly tense, scruffy addition to the one-last-crime genre.
Jan 16, 2012
70
The result is that rare Hollywood genre film that earns its intensity rather than forcing it upon you.
Jan 11, 2012
67
Contraband is a tidy little thriller that makes up in execution what it lacks in originality.
Jan 12, 2012
67
Kormákur and his collaborators want to tell a simple story cleanly, efficiently, and with a refreshing dearth of frills. They more or less realize their aspirations because they aim so low.
Jan 12, 2012
63
I don't know that a lot of Contraband makes sense. But I'm not sure that it has to. The director Baltasar Kormákur carries the movie off with efficiency, brutality, and humor.
Jan 12, 2012
63
Wahlberg has the presence, the glower and the laconic line readings to guide us through a mess of pain, painlessly.
