I wasn’t a fan of this one. Didn’t care for the plot or how some of the major characters were depicted, and to add insult to injury, Diego Luna is only in it for like 15 minutes tops.
Chris has gotten out of the smuggling game, gone straight with a legitimate construction business, but he’s pulled back in to help out his family. A clumsy mistake put his brother-in-law in deep with a drug lord, and the only way to pay his debts is for Chris to get a big score real fast. He assembles a crew and makes plans to get to Panama to collect their product.
For starters, Chris is a “good” smuggler, an honorable former criminal who’s only getting back in the game to save his brother-in-law’s ass. He’s a salt-of-the-earth working-class white guy, and he’s so adamant about not smuggling drugs that he makes the job a thousand times more complicated for the whole crew by insisting on collecting a crapload of counterfeit bills instead. Even when the job inevitably goes off the rails, he risks everybody to stay on target instead of pivoting to a more lucrative product that’s more feasible to smuggle. And it’s like, good for you, I guess? If Chris was faced with the Trolley Problem, he definitely wouldn’t pull the lever.
He's also a smuggling mastermind/jack of all trades—even though he specifically puts together a group of guys with different skill sets, he still winds up doing pretty much everything, knowing better than most members of his crew. Protagonists like him get tiring for me. I’d much rather see a leader who leans on the advice and skills of those around them than one who has the answer for everything.
Although Chris and his guys aren’t setting out to rob anybody, just transport illicit bills, the main action still has a lot of the beats of a standard heist movie, but it lacks the fun and inventiveness of some of my favorite examples of that genre. The film takes itself too seriously, and the end result is a bit of a slog.
Mark Wahlberg plays Chris, who feels so archetypal and bland that there’s not much to hang onto. (Side note: I know they were from over 30 years ago, but Wahlberg’s history of racist attacks is still worth mentioning.) His wife Kate is played, thanklessly, by Kate Beckinsale—this is a depressing, throwaway role that makes me feel a little bad for Beckinsale to see her in it. Ben Foster plays Chris’s friend Sebastian, who handles things stateside while Chris is in Panama. This role is squarely up Foster’s alley, and he plays it well. Giovanni Ribisi is effective as the menacing drug lord Briggs, while J.K. Simmons gets the job done as the captain of the ship Chris and his guys are hitching a ride on.
Luna plays Gonzalo, who’s taken over operation of the gang Chris’s crew is getting their counterfeit bills from. Having to deal directly with the boss is one of the ways the job gets off track in the first place, and that boss being Gonzalo is another—he’s recently deposed the gang’s former leader, who Chris had a good history with, and he’s not as willing to play ball.
Gonzalo’s reputation literally proceeds him, with Chris referring to him as “that little shit” and “a little fucking punk,” while one of his lackeys warns him that Gonzalo has been “acting crazy.” Basically, everything in the build-up tells us we’re about to meet the Scary Panamanian Crime Lord.
In light of that, the character we finally meet is less than a loose cannon than I was expecting. He’s definitely dangerous, but he doesn’t have the manic volatility of, say, Tuco on Breaking Bad or Moriarty on Sherlock. Instead, Luna’s performance is actually kind of muted/flat, his face a hard mask of blankness. Gonzalo says lines like, “We fed [my predecessor] to the wolves,” and he does have actual wolves on the premises, but with the air of someone who doesn’t really care about it. The only thing he really seems to be invested in is sticking it to everyone who underestimated him before his takeover.
I’m not sure what to make of that. In a film with a lot of clichés, it’s unexpected, so that’s interesting. On the whole, though, it’s not a role worth Luna’s talents. He gets a better deal than Beckinsale, but it’s still not great.
Recommend?
In General – I wouldn’t. Go for a fun heist movie with a charming/messy protagonist over this one.
Diego Luna – Naw. The role calls for so little, and he’s not in the film long enough to make it worthwhile.
Warnings
Violence, language, drinking/drug references, sexual references, and lazy treatment of female and Latino characters.
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