Contractor

Having just seen Hit-man, another film of the type "good hit-man fights bad hit men", but incredibly stupid, The Contractor seemed to me of incredibly unexpected good nature. The main character is human, fallible, vulnerable. He does his job as well as possible given the circumstances, he tries to save his skin as well as possible and when a stern "Moscow rules: if the mission fails you're already dead" assignment comes his way he feels no confusion when deciding he should stay very much alive, no matter the mission.

Of course, in all this gem of a script idea there is also bad screen play, occasional bad acting and things that make no sense. It's like a good machine without oil, everything is well made but not really working. The action scenes are shaky and amateurish for a Snipes movie, but then again, the point was not the action or the technical prowess of the hit men, but the fact that they are human beings.

At first I thought it was going to be another Nikita/Leon ripoff, but the girl story arch was sensible and reasonably original. The ending was a little bit forced, too.

Bottom line: in the abysmal hell of bad written hit-man action movies, this obscure film is a real gem in the mud and a reminder that the budget is not really important, nor the genre of the film, but the very real effort of actually trying to make a movie, not just money.

Not your typical Wesley Snipes kind of movie.(not really anyway) The acting isn't horrible. It was movie I watched it at mid evening with some popcorn, and it kept me entertained most of the time. It had a few good action scenes, but mostly it was a drama movie. The plot is by no means original either, but it plays out OK I guess. Snipes definitely wasn't at his best here. I haven't seen the other movie that is the same story, so I can't say which is better. Although I didn't feel the need to pause it for refills and pit-stops, So I gave it a 5/10. I wouldn't go to a theater to see it, but its good for a movie night when/if it gets released on cable/satellite. -P.F.

Thus far, Wesley Snipes output of DTV flicks has been somewhat poor in quality. That would be the polite way to describe dreck like The Detonator and The Marksman anyway. However, his last flick, Hard Luck, re-teaming with his New Jack City director, Mario Van Peebles, was at least watchable. It was a bit all over the place sure, but Snipes gave a performance of some interest. The Contractor is most certainly, Wes's finest DTV action flick so far. That's not to say it's particularly great, but on an overall scale, it's about on a par with Van Damme's, The Hard Corps.

The plot is in part similar to Mark Wahlberg's recent flick, The Shooter, and also Leon. It's the Leon part of the story that works best in this film, while the usual hokey espionage and agency double crossing is the main ingredient on the Shooter side of this film. Snipes is an ex-sniper called in to do a job and ends up being left to take the fall for his employers, who also want to dispose of Snipes now. Following his assignment and initial run in with the law, Wesley holes up in a safe house, where he meets Emily, a tenacious and troubled young girl, who is neighbours with the safe houses owner. She helps James Dial (Snipes) recuperate from a gunshot, while also helping him avoid capture. The relationship between Dial and Emily could have wrecked the movie with inconceivability, however it works.

This is where the film's main strength lies, the cast. Wesley for a start puts in the effort. He's not dialling this one in, like previous roles. He gives the role extra dimension. The cast, for a DTV film, is also blessed with recognisable names. Lena Headey is good, and hot, and Charles Dance and Ralph Brown also appear to add class. The real star here though is young actress Eliza Bennett, who plays Emily. It's so rare that young actors can really immerse themselves in a role, and be totally natural on screen. We've seen it countless times in even the biggest flicks, that young actors given important roles just cannot act. I give you Jake Lloyd as an example, or the Harry Potter kids (from the first two flicks at least, while even now they only border on competent). But Bennett is a real star in the making, oozing potential and an amazing amount of gravitas for someone so young. She is her character, and we never have to make account for her being a young actor playing a role out of her range. She has a good role that she not only does extremely well, but I imagine, created much of herself. We're talking on the same playing field as Haley Joel Osment, Dakota Fanning, Freddie Highmore. She'll be huge I predict. Indeed I think Wesley would have appreciated having someone with real, genuine talent to work off. It's a role that requires maturity and immersion, and because Bennett becomes her character so effectively, she and Snipes can work off each other so well. To think a DTV could have pulled a gem out the hat like this is quite something. By past occurrence, Snipes should have been acting opposite a lump of infantile, irksome, wood.

One failing of the film lies at the feet of director Josef Rusnak. His aping of Tony Scott is problematic. The constant hand-cranking of the camera and blitzkrieg editing, just gets painful, and the action is a mixture of competent, neat scenes, and real misfires, such as a strobe lighting shootout. As for hand to hand fisticuffs, Snipes has one brief fight, which is really well done. A bit more of that would have been better than the somewhat underfinanced gunfights. Still there's a few good foot and car chases here, while the UK locales make a change from the DTV norm of Eastern Europe (Though there's still some fairly blatant Bulgaria moments here). The score isn't too bad either. It's neither memorable, exciting, nor is it irritating or grating. Overall a decent DTV effort. Worth a watch if only to marvel at a shockingly decent cast for such a film. Look out for Bennett in the future too. **1/2

Wesley Snipes is an ex-killer for the CIA, living contentedly on a ranch. He's asked to come back to kill a bad, bad man.... and realizes it's a set-up to get him killed. He also needs to take care of 15-year-old Eliza Bennett because the writers must have seen THE PROFESSIONAL and said "I can do that!"

No they can't. It's a decently acted movie -- it's got Charles Dance and Lena Headley -- but it's so derivative that you'll watch it and wonder as it plods self-importantly through its plot points, why they stole this particular twist from that movie, instead of a different plot twist from another. Or any of ten others.

It went straight to video. Now it's on the higher-numbered cable channels.

Wesley Snipes is James Dial, an assassin for hire, agent of the CIA and pure bad-ass special operative. During his free time Dial dons a cowboy hat and breeds horses with macho names such as Beauty.

Enter agent Collins, his supervising officer. Enter a new assignment - kill a terrorist that is in UK custody. Of course the United Kingdom being an allied state is a great place for covert ops and head-shots outside of courtrooms.

The assassination is a big success apart from the fact, that the escape plan blew. So Dial's partner and local liaison gets killed in action trying to escape the police, whilst Dial becomes hot property with the London coppers trying to get to him and CIA trying to dispose of him.

Fortunately for Dial the safe-house is routinely visited by a teenager Emily Day (Eliza Bennett), who loves hanging out with cold-blooded killers with arrest warrants and help them escape from the evil UK law enforcement...

With a script like that need I say more? On the plus side Wesley Snipes is Wesley Snipes (be that a pro or a con) and the movie is quite engaging. On the minus editing is very disjointing and has a hurl effect on the stomach.