The second espionage thriller with Chris Pine of 2022 is The Contractor. It’s a high-octane thriller that reunites him with Ben Foster after they both had a great showing in the movie Hell or High water. The Contractor is far different than All the old Knives. If you’re craving action in an espionage movie, then this is the Chris Pine Movie for you. The best way I can describe it is it’s like Chris Pine decided to do a Bourne Identity movie. There’s not much to the story, but you will get a lot of action and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. Chris Pine can definitely do an action role, he’s certainly believable. I could see him as Jason Bourne if Matt Damon had never done the role. The story is about an army special forces soldier who is drummed out of the military and in order to make enough money to stop drowning in debt, he accepts a job with his best friend being a private contractor. Essentially, he goes to work for a private special forces firm and when a job goes sideways, the best way for the company to clean up its mess is to kill all those who did the job. I don’t really consider this a spoiler because it’s not hard to figure out what’s going to happen.
First off, let’s just get this out of the way. This is not a great movie, the best parts of the movie are the action scenes. And if you’re looking for a repeat of the magic that Chris Pine had with Ben Foster from Hell or High water… Just go watch that movie again. Well, I don’t want to make the comparison to The Bourne Identity too much, I honestly feel like that’s what I was watching and if that’s the story you’re going to tell, isn’t this story better told in a series. The movie starts out a little slow but once the action starts, we’re off to the races until the very end and because the action moves so quickly, we don’t get that much of a story. That’s this movie’s biggest downfall, it doesn’t take the time to explore what could have been a great story on why Chris Pine’s character is betrayed and how he’s going to fix it in order to save his family. You can’t tell this kind of story in 1 hour and 45 minutes and expect it to be that good. This is the kind of story that needs six to eight episodes because there’s so much more happening behind the scenes than just some rogue leader of a private special forces unit who has to clean up his mess when everything goes wrong. Kiefer Sutherland plays the leader of this outfit and I found myself wanting to know more about his character. Nothing is really explained about his character.
Great espionage thrillers take the time to tell all parts of a story, especially the backstory. An important part of storytelling is how your characters got to where they are at the beginning of your movie or your series. You can certainly tell that throughout flashbacks and that’s one of the things they did in All the Old Knives really well. And unfortunately, there’s only two good scenes in this movie that bring out the human element to the story or more specifically make you care about the characters. One is the scene where Chris pines character is talking to the Marine who just tried to kill him and finds out more about who is trying to kill him. And the other scene is with the character who runs the safe house when they’re having dinner.
I enjoyed the action in this movie and Chris Pine was great at it, but to tell a great espionage thriller you have to have a proper amount of action and drama… The story can’t be all action. There are moments when as the audience, we have to catch our breath. A slow burn to the investigation within your story is just as important as the action sequences and there has to be a good balance between those things. I feel like with The Contractor they just went for action and that’s it. Like I said, it’s like they wanted to make their own version of The Bourne Identity. But here’s what does work in the film. The performances are great. Yes, we could have seen a lot more with Chris Pine’s character and Ben Foster’s character. All that could have been explored more if this had been a series, but they have great chemistry together and it is evident in this film. Kiefer Sutherland does make a great leader of a private special forces firm. It’s not like the casting wasn’t good, we just didn’t get as much with the characters as we could have if this had been a series. Like for example, J.D. Pardo, who played the Marine has a short amount of screen time and he is an actor that has a great presence on the screen and a lot of charisma. If you don’t know what I’m talking about then go watch Mayans MC… It’s almost a waste to have him in this film if you’re not going to let him do anything except a few fight scenes.
The idea for this movie was great, but they failed to deliver, simple as that. It’s okay for the action sequences, but the story seems familiar and there’s not enough backstory to make us really care about what’s going on. A good espionage thriller should make the audience have a vested interest in the story and sometimes that’s why you need the slow burn as I mentioned before. But the thing with great ideas is to be more than just an idea… you gotta deliver with the story, or you just have a wasted film or series, and more importantly, a waste of a great cast. Writers and directors have to give the actors something to work with. This is one of those films where I wouldn’t have minded a three-hour movie so it makes me wonder if this film was cut short by the studio and who’s to blame for wasting such a great idea and making what is a “B” version of a story we’ve already seen. This isn’t a movie that’s worth renting on premium high demand for $20 or even going to the theater to see. It may be worth a good rental just for the action, but sadly The Contractor doesn’t live up to what it could have been!
