The film was released on 13 January 2012 in the United States.
Critical reception On
Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 50% based on 163 reviews, with an average score of 5.4/10. The site's critics consensus states: "It's more entertaining than your average January action thriller, but that isn't enough to excuse
Contraband's lack of originality and unnecessarily convoluted plot."
Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 51 out of 100 based on 38 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences surveyed by
CinemaScore gave the film an average grade "A−" on an A+ to F scale.
Roger Ebert of the
Chicago Sun-Times gave the film two out of four, and felt that "
Contraband involves a lot of energy," but he was growing "tired of violent retreads of these heist elements." Tom Long of
The Detroit News criticized the film for having "too much plot and too little character" and concluded that it "comes off the factory floor with its engine running and ready to drive. But the ride feels overly familiar." Claudia Puig of
USA Today called "the 'one last job' trope ... a particularly tired one" and remarked that while it "has a few moments of tension," the film "adheres to a predictable heist formula hardly worth trafficking in." Andrew O'Hehir of
Salon characterized the film as "exactly the sort of movie that Hollywood specializes in, the kind which seems on paper as if it ought to be entertaining, but winds up a massive and chaotic drag" and observed that "it's much more like a cynical hash job, whose faux-realistic manner can't hide all the hackneyed crime-movie situations."
Peter Travers of
Rolling Stone thought the film "goes down in a sea of Hollywood clichés" and that Mark "Wahlberg could sleepwalk through this role, and does. See this movie and you'll surely follow his lead." Scott Tobias of
NPR dismissed the film as a "mediocre [...] thriller," something "to be remembered, vaguely". Rafer Guzman of
Newsday expressed disappointment that "a little action is all you'll get" and opined that the film "fails by overreaching: It aspires to the heightened drama of
The Departed but lands instead in the bargain bin of forgettable action product." Justin Chang of
Variety praised the film as "reasonably swift and effective" and for taking "a hard-driving line of action and a commitment to one-damned-thing-after-another storytelling", while suffering from "preposterous detours". Michael O'Sullivan of
The Washington Post compared the film to "an ''
Ocean's Eleven movie, minus the glamour". Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly'' stated that the film, "while often grungy and far-fetched, does keep you watching", which is
sufficient for a film released in January.
Home media Contraband was released to DVD and Blu-ray on April 24, 2012. The Blu-ray was reissued in 2015 and 2019. In 2021, Mill Creek Entertainment released a Blu-ray double feature featuring
Contraband and fellow Universal film
Fear in which Mark Wahlberg also starred. ==References==