The Contractor is available on Prime Video, the first film shot in America by Tarik Saleh, a Swedish director of Egyptian origin who was in competition at the Cannes Film Festival 2022 with Boy From Heaven and was awarded there for the best screenplay. In the cast, alongside Chris Pine, also Ben Foster, Kiefer Sutherland and Eddie Marsan.
On paper, of films like The Contractor we have seen so many. The references are there, they are obvious, evident. That the US Army Ranger forced to leave because he used steroids to treat a crushed knee and serve his country ends up as a mercenary, and that during a mission to Berlin with dark contours and opaque content he finds himself alone , and target of those who should have been “his”, is not particularly surprising.
But certain parallels made with Jason Bourne they hold little. After all, even those with Ramboalthough perhaps, paradoxically, the points of contact are not lacking, in both cases.
Of course, if we stop at the script, which is such JP Davisand which is not exactly excellent, in spite of a curious but certainly not paranormal foresight on issues concerning viruses and vaccines, we could also think in terms of the genre.
But The Contractor is a film directed by Tarik Salehwhich is to movies like Murder in Cairoor of Boy From Heaven which won the award for best screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival 2021and that here, after directing an episode of Westworld is one of Ray Donovansign his first American feature film.
And the fact that here you seem to want to be almost “invisible”, almost “of service” to his story and his character, somehow does nothing but turn on continuously flashing lights that warn the viewer that behind the camera there is no ‘is any shooter.
It’s a question of details, moments, suspensions, changes of pace.
It is a question of whether The Contractor is a film that could have been a clone of any other similar product, on paper, were it not for the hand of Saleh made it antispectacular, crepuscular and imploded, but by no means low adrenaline, loading situations and characters with a psychological, ethical and moral weight that yes, of course, is full of more American ambiguities than those told elsewhere by Saleh (militarist, religious, family, economic), but which makes it a film of losers, of losers, pervaded by a gloom that does not find much redemption even in the final shot.
Watch The Contractor on Prime Video now
To lend a hand to Saleh there is Chris Pine. Who, as we’ve already got to say, is for some odd reason the favorite actor of Quentin Tarantino (which, however, you have not cast him in one of his films) and who is applying to become for Prime Video something like that Adam Sandler and for Netflix.
Here Pine it is the quintessence of implosion and torment, a torment managed in a stoic way and with a refined inexpressiveness, linked to the ideals of endurance, sacrifice and the imperative to keep a cool head and clear head even in the most tense situations.
That of Pine he is an anti-hero compressed between the weight of a life spent pursuing certain ideals (not all very healthy) and that of new, complex and painful awareness that emerge, and that emerge from the need for salvation.
The resolution of the events, in The Contractor, is ambiguous, perhaps deliberately, certainly predictable. But once again: it’s not a question of script, but of direction. Directed by a Tarik Saleh who puts his signature on scenes and shots even when he seems to pretend nothing has happened, and to be a mere performer.
A direction that, while you watch The Contractorhis darker than reflective moments, the management of his dialogues (those between Pine And Ben Fosteris between Pine And Kiefer Sutherlandis between Pine And Eddie Marsanfor example), his highly studied and naturalistic effective action scenes, makes you think that well, in a film like this you weren’t expecting certain things at all.
Which, it seems to me, is a result that should not be underestimated.
