First of all, let me just mention the fact that I have not yet had the chance to see the Mark Whalberg movie Shooter. The Contractor and Shooter are, at least on paper, almost the same movie. A hit-man is given one important assignment, to kill someone very important, he does the job and then finds out he was set up by the very people that hired him.
So, Wesley Snipes has not been in a good movie since...well since Blade 2 if you ask me. His DTV career led to him making his worst movie The Marksman. After that low point I had not expected him to make another decent movie for a very long time, I half expected him to follow in Steven Seagal's steps and keep making awful DTV movie after awful DTV movie.
With The Contractor, I was proved wrong. The movie has nothing original in it. You've seen it all before and done better, but what it does is something more DTV movies should do: it keeps the story simple and clear, it has interesting and well developed characters, it has some nice locations, it has a pretty good soundtrack and it has some talented actors. The director was OK, nothing special, but unlike most DTV directors, he manages to actually direct coherently and pretty well. The Contractor is more of an action thriller, it has a quite low action quotient, but we do get some nice shootouts, nothing special, a pretty cool fight scene, but the thing that keeps the movie going is a nice and clear and very well told story that, despite being completely predictable, it works because it follows the formula in a very relaxed manner, it just does its job effortlessly and that is the best thing about the entire movie.
The movie does what it sets out to do, to be an entertaining action movie and it does it quite well. The cinematography is nice, the music is good, the acting is very good (although no awards will be handed out) and the pace is nice and relaxed, not too slow, not too fast.
The Contractor is a competent action thriller that had it received more attention it could have and should have been a Cinema movie. It just did not have a big enough budget to be a Cinema movie and that shows in the action scenes, they are not bad, just too simplistic and minimalistic and not through intent, rather through a lack of money to do anything bigger. There is one actress in the movie, the young girl, who really stands out and impressed me and that is quite unexpected in such a movie. Snipes genuinely seems interested in the movie and in the material and although he clearly is not at the level we've seen him before (his career is full of examples of fine acting) he puts just the right amount of effort into the movie.
Overall, the best movie Snipes has done in quite a while, a nice action movie that is definitely worth seeing and perhaps the first step towards bigger and better things for him.
Definitely one of the best DTV action movies out there. Snipes has managed to reach the level of quality we're used to seeing from him and this movie is on par with the action movies put out in recent years by Jean Claude Van Damme (Replicant, In Hell, Wake of Death, The Hard Corps, Until Death all above average action movies) and Dolph Lundgren (The Defender and The Mechanik).
So, Wesley Snipes has not been in a good movie since...well since Blade 2 if you ask me. His DTV career led to him making his worst movie The Marksman. After that low point I had not expected him to make another decent movie for a very long time, I half expected him to follow in Steven Seagal's steps and keep making awful DTV movie after awful DTV movie.
With The Contractor, I was proved wrong. The movie has nothing original in it. You've seen it all before and done better, but what it does is something more DTV movies should do: it keeps the story simple and clear, it has interesting and well developed characters, it has some nice locations, it has a pretty good soundtrack and it has some talented actors. The director was OK, nothing special, but unlike most DTV directors, he manages to actually direct coherently and pretty well. The Contractor is more of an action thriller, it has a quite low action quotient, but we do get some nice shootouts, nothing special, a pretty cool fight scene, but the thing that keeps the movie going is a nice and clear and very well told story that, despite being completely predictable, it works because it follows the formula in a very relaxed manner, it just does its job effortlessly and that is the best thing about the entire movie.
The movie does what it sets out to do, to be an entertaining action movie and it does it quite well. The cinematography is nice, the music is good, the acting is very good (although no awards will be handed out) and the pace is nice and relaxed, not too slow, not too fast.
The Contractor is a competent action thriller that had it received more attention it could have and should have been a Cinema movie. It just did not have a big enough budget to be a Cinema movie and that shows in the action scenes, they are not bad, just too simplistic and minimalistic and not through intent, rather through a lack of money to do anything bigger. There is one actress in the movie, the young girl, who really stands out and impressed me and that is quite unexpected in such a movie. Snipes genuinely seems interested in the movie and in the material and although he clearly is not at the level we've seen him before (his career is full of examples of fine acting) he puts just the right amount of effort into the movie.
Overall, the best movie Snipes has done in quite a while, a nice action movie that is definitely worth seeing and perhaps the first step towards bigger and better things for him.
Definitely one of the best DTV action movies out there. Snipes has managed to reach the level of quality we're used to seeing from him and this movie is on par with the action movies put out in recent years by Jean Claude Van Damme (Replicant, In Hell, Wake of Death, The Hard Corps, Until Death all above average action movies) and Dolph Lundgren (The Defender and The Mechanik).