After losing his wife to cancer two years ago, Ray Keene’s (John Cusack) relationship with his teenage son Chris as his behaviour becomes increasingly off the rails. To mend this shattered relationship, Ray decides to take Chris on a camping trip, somewhere the two of them can bond once again. Chris reluctantly agrees and the two set off into the woods together.
Meanwhile, a million miles away metaphorically but right on their door step in reality is Frank Carden (Morgan Freeman). Frank is a professional assassin who, by chance was caught by the police after a freak car accident and taken into the US Marshals custody. While being escorted by US Marshals, Frank’s ’business associates’ interfere and cause the car escorting Frank to veer off down a cliff and into a river.
Frank manages to shoot the one remaining US Marshal after the rest were killed by Frank’s men. While Ray and Chris are hiking through the woods they happen to spot the men struggling in the river and just before the US Marshal dies he tells Ray that Frank is now in his custody and he must escort him back up to the road so that the police can take hold of him. With the help of his police training, a gun and his sons wilderness experience Ray and his son must escort Frank into police custody but with Frank’s military trained assassins on the trail it’s a game of cat and mouse and all bets are on Frank…
Usually this is just the sort of film that I would take notice of upon it’s release but for some reason this film managed to slip under the radar. With an A-List cast including Morgan
Freeman and John Cusack it makes you think that this film must be distinctly lacking in something else other than the cast for it to have slipped under the radar like it did.
I first saw this on Sky Box Office a couple of years ago, it was originally released in 2006 and before I noticed it on Sky Box Office I had never heard of it but was intrigued enough to watch it, hoping that with such a stellar cast it might manage to perk the film up a bit. Needless to say I was extremely disappointed by the end result, so much so that when I saw this advertised on Channel 5 a couple of days ago I had no idea what it was until I got about half an hour into the film. Since I had completely forgotten about this film I decided to watch it all the way through, hoping that maybe the reason I forgot it wasn’t because it was a terrible film but maybe something else… amnesia maybe! Well as I’m only 19 the first option seemed more viable and unlucky for the film but luckily for me it was simply that this is such a dire film!
The story, although there’s nothing stand-out about it could have been quite good and on the premise of what was going to happen I decided to stick with it but unfortunately this film seems to disappoint every way you look at it. It’s one of those films that isn’t bad enough to turn off although you really want to yet you want to keep watching, not to see what happens but because if you manage to sit through until the end of it you can see it as some sort of big achievement. Much like me managing to miraculously sit through Lord Of The Rings or Star Wars! Luckily The Contract doesn’t quite fit into the category as those two hideously bad films however it doesn’t do itself any favours in the form of being associated with them.
I used the term ‘luckily’ very loosely in the previous sentence because I think it was actually lucky that this film managed to slip under the radar, not for the unlucky few that have had to endure it but for the thousands of people who were spared this train-wreck of a film.
By the tone of this review thus far I seem to have painted the image of an unbearable and unwatchable catastrophe of a film, whereas in actual fact this film is just about tolerable that’s if you don’t have a short attention span like me. However I did manage to sit through this film twice which in itself I am quite impressed with, simply because of the sheer volume of things that are wrong with this film, it’s incredible to me how a film with such a fantastic cast manages to completely fall flat and become the disaster that it is.
After about 10 minutes of watching it I actually considered turning this off, this was before I realised that I had seen it before. The film just doesn’t seem to gel and considering this film is titled as a thriller it doesn’t seem to pick up any sort of pace, it just dawdles along and every so often it would take a step back, much like a baby learning to walk. The film remains slow for it’s entirety and after persisting for around 97 minutes, the ending couldn’t possibly come any sooner. This film could have been a lot better than it actually was but unfortunately it’s an awful film that doesn’t even replicate a good thriller.
The characters seem absolutely ridiculous; Ray is supposed to be an ex policeman who now works as a P.E teacher, well for an ex policeman there seems to be a distinct lack of knowledge concerning what to do when escorting a criminal, infact at the start he barely even knows how to handle a gun to nearing the end where he’s become some sort of expert. The film is just completely contrived and utterly incomprehensible. John Cusack isn’t an actor that I’m too familiar with, I’ve seen a couple of films that he’s apparently starred in although I don’t remember him at all which is much like his performance in this film; completely unmemorable and disappointing. He doesn’t seem to be able to convincingly portray any sort of emotion, even when his son is in grave danger, looking at the expression on his face you’d be forgiven for thinking that this is an everyday occurrence for him. Morgan Freeman is one of my favourite actors and although I hate to say it but even he fails to do what he was supposed to do in this film. I think they tried to mess around with his character too much which made his role completely unbelievable, at first we see him as this stone cold killer but as the film goes we start to see some human emotion exuding from him which just completely ruins his character all together. I think they should have kept him as a cold blooded assassin with no sense of remorse whatsoever and the film would have been a much more thrilling experience.
The action was minimal and when there was action it was generally bad and a complete waste of time really. The action scenes didn’t seem to be very imaginative and were almost just done for the need of some action.
For a film that is specifically classed as a thriller, a tense thriller infact I found it to be very overrated and extremely underwhelming. All in all I’d say that this film is a complete waste of time, everything about it seems wrong; the acting, the characters, the script, the action. I can’t think of one single thing that I liked about this film, that’s if you leave out the end credits as they came as a huge relief. If you see this film anywhere, whether it be on the internet, in the shops or on your TV I would suggest that you stay as far away from it as possible, that way you wont have just wasted an hour and a half of your life that you can never get back!
If you’re one of those people that doesn’t actually read reviews and instead just scroll down to the bottom of the page to leave a rating, if you happen to catch a glimpse of the price and think you may just give it a go then by all means be my guest, for all those who have had the courtesy to read this then you’ll already know my opinion on whether you should give it the time of day or not! It costs £4.99 at play.com.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Thriller - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Timothy West, Neil Morrissey, Tara Fitzgerald, Annette Crosbie, Pauline Quirke, Rob Brydon, Denise Van Outen, John Thomson, Kevin Whately, David Suchet
Production Year: 2002 - Thriller - Director: Bharat Nalluri, Rob Bailey, Andy Wilson - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Matthew MacFadyen, Keeley Hawes, David Oyelowo, Peter Firth, Jenny Agutter, Lisa Faulkner
if it has such a slow start hubby would go mad and turn it off, - lyn x
Hishyeness 04.06.2009 19:10
I too was disappointed - I expected much better from Freeman and Cusack, but for some reason, it just didn't come together. Nicely written review. 8^)
DixieChick10 04.06.2009 18:55
I've never heard of this before, because it's got Morgan Freeman in it, I would usually wanna watch it, but thanks for warning me against it. Brill review. Kirsty
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Jun 4th, 2009
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