★☆☆☆☆

I like Chris Pine and I like Kiefer Sutherland. The Contractor went on my rental list because they were both in it. Having said that I’m still giving this a single star rating. How can a studio completely screw up a movie about military contractors and how guys end up there?

This was not a failure of acting

It appears the studio decided to to have the writers take a spoon from every trope, just a spoon mind you, and toss it all into some half-baked story about broken veterans trying to get back into the fight any way they can. Quite honestly this movie couldn’t decide what story it wanted to tell so it didn’t tell any of them well. Pretty much didn’t finish the stories. A couple of stories it finished without ever starting.

Gospel truth, I don’t think the scenes needed to fix this even exist on the cutting room floor. What I find shocking is that Chris Pine and Keifer Sutherland agreed to do the movie. They are both capable of so much more.

Gist of it

Chris Pine’s character spends a lot of time in a seemingly abandoned for a long time house cleaning his gun and washing with water out of a gallon jug. He has a messed up knee and shoots up to deal with it. New captain wants to clean house. Has everybody’s blood tested and kicks out all of the “dirty” players.

Okay. Let’s follow the story of old soldiers the military decides can no longer chew the leather, right? Important story and worth telling. Maybe that’s what they thought they were doing, but they didn’t achieve that. We veer off into money troubles, Chris’s character not finding work and being up on the roof replacing shingles at night. Another military buddy offs himself and Chris has to attend the services.

Just a Vehicle

The Contractor could have pursued that and the story of how soldiers fail to transition to civilian life. Nope. Just used that as a vehicle to get him to meet Kiefer Sutherland’s character and join a military contractor company. Yes, that’s probably how many get there, but the rest of the movie is an almost cheesy “special ops” story followed by a bit of a vendetta.

Summary

I watched the whole movie. Didn’t turn it off because I wanted to believe these two actors picked a script that would redeem itself. Had it just been a cheesy military contractor shoot-em-up movie or had they pursued the “broken warrior” story this could have been a fantastic movie. Instead it is one you should consider skipping.

For more movie rental ideas please see list one and list two.