Ever since, I'm always curious about how smugglers hide items so that they can able to enter territories without being inspected by customs or the police.  Our local movies specially those action movies back in the 80's and 90's has great share of characters smuggling guns or drugs to the country and they do always show some techniques how to do it.  But I guess those are the old times.

Chris Farraday (Wahlberg) long ago abandoned his life of crime, but after his brother-in-law, Andy (Caleb Landry Jones), botches a drug deal for his ruthless boss, Tim Briggs (Giovanni Ribisi), Chris is forced back into doing what he does best—running contraband—to settle Andy’s debt. Chris is a legendary smuggler and quickly assembles a crew with the help of his best friend, Sebastian (Ben Foster), to head to Panama and return with millions in counterfeit bills.

Things quickly fall apart and with only hours to reach the cash, Chris must use his rusty skills to successfully navigate a treacherous criminal network of brutal drug lords, cops and hit men before his wife, Kate (Kate Beckinsale), and sons become their target.

Of course US feds and customs has a more intensive intelligence with regards these smugglers so I assume that they must have learned all the tricks available.  With this movie, it showed how smugglers become more creative on hiding things not to mention disguising so they can live among regular people.  These smugglers are different to those we already know.  They are subcontractors hired to smuggle goods that did not necessarily belongs to them.  It is a very refreshing concept and quite intriguing too.



All the actors did a very good job portraying their respective roles.  Mark Wahlberg and Kate Beckinsale already proved themselves quite sometime in the past with good movies they've done so I already expected it from them.  This time Ben Foster shines the most and delivers a very impressive performance among them all.  The last time I saw him is on a very small role in X-Men Last Stand where he played the winged mutant Angel / Warren Worthington III.   Now he did showed that he has the potential to be character actor that producers should watch out for.



If you are curious to know what goes on a daily life of a smuggler then watch Contraband.  Maybe you can learn a thing or two about smuggling though at least not on a bigger or unlawful scale.  Now showing on all cinemas from Universal Pictures, distributed by United International Pictures Philippines under Solar Entertainment.