Contraband Analysis

Contraband Dir. Baltasar Kormakur (2012)

Contraband is an American Crime/Thriller film filmed in America and Panama. The movie was made on a budget of almost $25 million and grossed nearly $96.3 million. The film is a remake of Reykjavik - Rotterdam (2008) in which the director Baltasar Kormakur, played the role of the protagonist Kristofer. The films production companies include Universal pictures, Relativity Media, StudioCanal, Closest to the hole productions and several others.

In the movie, Mark Wahlberg plays the role of Chris Faraday, the movie is set around a former smuggler having to start smuggling products in order to protect his brother-in-law from a drug lord.

The opening credits, music and scene helps set the mood and tone of the film. The music sounds ominous at the start, but then starts to get louder and as it progresses it turns from almost dark and ominous to lighter and almost hopeful.
The opening credits give us a hint as to where the film is set or one of the locations that will be used in the film. As we see the productions companies names and the director and actors names, in the background we can see an aerial shot of a shipping port, a wide shot of the port and a wide shot of a ship and several cranes behind it. This gives us hints that the port shown could be a key element of the film and where it is set. The first thing we see from the opening scene is a long shot with a large bridge with lights on, with some of the city behind it and a large ship with containers on it. The next shot is a establishing shot in which we can see the city from a high angle and then a helicopter enters the shot. Kormakur uses these shots to show the locations where the film is set and to let the audience place themselves in the city.
Kormakur shoots the opening scenes at night to provide the audience with a sense of what the tone of the movie could be like. The opening music and scenes suggests to the audience that the film could include dark themes such as murder and drugs.

Baltasar uses lighting and several different types of camera shots throughout the film to provide the audience with different views on the characters. He uses close-ups to provide the audience with an insight into the characters feelings and uses their facial expressions and nuances to help us get an idea of what sort of person they are. Baltasar shows different sides of the characters by using different camera angles, for example in the top picture on the right, we see Sebastian (the man on the left) with Chris and Kate looking like they are all close and like family almost, but then we see another scene in which Sebastian looks like he could pose a danger to Chris. Baltasar does this to show how quick things can change in the underworld that the audience is being immersed in.

Baltasar also uses the lighting to show vulnerability within the characters in the movie. We see this in the scene where Chris goes to see Briggs (the Drug Lord) at his apartment. In this picture we see Briggs placed in the middle of the doorway of his apartment, this has connotations of him being in the middle of the smuggling ring. The positioning of him shows him standing in a dark doorway and some of his face being placed within the sunlight. The light on his face shows his vulnerability as he standing in the dark showing that is his natural place almost, kind of behind the scenes of everything that is happening and the light is shown to connote his barely steps out of it as he wouldn't have as much power or control over things. We see this vulnerability when Chris beats up Briggs taking his gun and pulls out his own and put it up against Briggs' face. This scene is used to show the audience how quickly things can change in their world.