ContrabandMovie Reviews

Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

  • 75
    Entertainment Weekly | Owen Gleiberman

    Contraband, while often grungy and far-fetched, does keep you watching. And in January, that's recommendation enough. Read full review

  • 70
    Wall Street Journal | Joe Morgenstern

    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. Read full review

  • 63
    Boston Globe | Wesley Morris

    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. Read full review

  • 60
    The Hollywood Reporter | Todd McCarthy

    The lead role of a working class former smuggler who dirties his hands again to save his family fits Mark Wahlberg like a glove. Read full review

  • 55
    NPR | Scott Tobias

    Nothing about it lingers, not even the sulfuric stench of a bum scene or a particularly hammy performance. Read full review

  • 50
    Rolling Stone | Peter Travers

    Wahlberg could sleepwalk through this role, and does. See this movie and you'll surely follow his lead. Read full review

  • 50
    San Francisco Chronicle | Mick LaSalle

    Let's start by admitting three things: that Contraband is a ridiculous movie, that it wasn't meant to be a ridiculous movie, and that it's an enjoyable movie. One of the things that makes it enjoyable is that it's so ridiculous. Read full review

  • 50
    USA Today | Claudia Puig

    Contraband has a few moments of tension, but it adheres to a predictable heist formula hardly worth trafficking in. Read full review

  • 50
    Philadelphia Inquirer | Steven Rea

    A big comedown from "The Fighter," Contraband finds Wahlberg in default mode: With his Popeye biceps and broody stares, the actor can do a character like Chris without even thinking about it - and that's what he does here. Read full review

  • 40
    New York Daily News | Joe Neumaier

    Only Wahlberg rises above the muck; everything else here feels buried in concrete. Read full review

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Dave White

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