Film
Adam Sweeting
I always used to avoid any film that had Mark Wahlberg in it, because he seemed to have the acting skills of a park bench. Then I saw The Departed - because you have to see Marty's movies - and thought he was brilliant as the astonishingly foul-mouthed Sergeant Dignam. Now I've seen Contraband and regrettably, it may be time to revert to Plan A.Contraband is an over-long and laborious heist thriller, a remake of the Icelandic flick Reykjavik-Rotterdam but transplanted to New Orleans. The atmospheric hook is supposed to be its evocation of a grungy Louisiana low-life operating in the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It's probably no coincidence that non-American reviewers have been less exalted in their praise for this film than US ones, as it's sort of in a foreign language for them – that of baseball, a sport in love with nerdy statistics and clichés, even more than American football is, which is saying something. And it's true to say that if you don't have a passing acquaintance with baseball there will be large stretches of this film, and much of its narrative, that you will have not a clue about. But them's the parts where you just drool over Brad Pitt.In Bennett Miller's slow-moving but engaging Read more ...