Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

The Contractor 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman May 30, 2022

The Contractor was a box office flop that had every reason to at least break even on its midrange budget. The film, from Director Tarik Saleh (making his first really big movie), stars Chris Pine who by every right should be a bigger star than he is, despite his leading man Star Trek fame. Pine's latest film is a very competent and very enjoyable picture that, while also rote and generic, is very well done and capably absorbing while it's playing on the screen. No classic and not even with much long-term replay value, the film is certainly a big step above so much of the tripe on the market that, even at the level of "good but forgettable" deserves more than it earned in box office in particular but also tips of the cap to its writer, director, and cast.

James (Pine) has given almost everything he has to give for his country. What he has left to show for it is a lot of scarring, a lot of pain, both external and internal alike. He and his family are on the verge of bankruptcy, and he has chosen to take some nonprescription, off the books pain medicine for his wounds in hopes of maintaining fitness for duty. Unfortunately, drug tests reveal the truth, and he is honorably discharged form service but loses his pension and health benefits as a result. Desperate and against his wife's wishes, but with the help of his friend Mike (Ben Foster), he takes a job as contractor for a third-party paramilitary outfit run by a man named Rusty (Keifer Sutherland). His mission is to go undercover in Germany as part of a small four-person team and observe a target believed to be building a weapon for a terrorist organization. When the team gets the green light to infiltrate and eliminate the target, the mission goes horribly awry. Now, James finds himself alone, wounded, and on the run from German authorities and discovers that there may be something more nefarious going on behind the scenes with his new employer than he was led to believe.

The Contractor does what few films can: build momentum and hold interest even in the midst of a completely rote storyline with prefabricated characters and standard fare action driving it forward. The film's hero is a typical movie protagonist: a good man with a good heart who made a gray area choice and finds himself forced to deal with the consequences. He finds himself forced into a corner, going against his (and his wife's) better judgment and discovering that supposedly easy money is not so easy as it seems. The film follows from there with well-engineered but familiarly structured action scenes and routine character and story advancing beats, yet somehow it defies the odds and works well within a self-contained bubble. It's well paced, technically sound, and really quite an enjoyable watch when it's all said and done.

The film is also well acted, which is a tribute to a dedicated cast that could have phoned in standard fare characters and refused to build any internal depth. Pine's James is a man is a man defined by character development 101. He has very real, tangible, physical scars that only feed into the internal scarring on his heart and soul. Pine does not allow the movie-simple characteristics to divert him from giving the performance all he's got, which is quite a bit. He builds a sympathetic character worth rooting for, even when he toes the line between right and wrong because his heart almost always seems to be in the right place, even if all other sensory inputs are telling him to take another path. The support cast plays it well, particularly Foster who is a little less of a gray area character but who rides in the same boat, anyway. Sutherland is the only one who seems to give the movie less than maximum effort, but even at half speed he does a fair job with a very poorly and quickly developed character.

The Contractor 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The included screenshots are sourced from a 1080p Blu-ray disc.

On UHD, The Contractor features a 2160p/HDR (not Paramount's usual Dolby Vision) presentation which is actually a fair bit of an improvement over the very, very good Blu-ray. The first item viewers will note is the drastically deeper and more stable color palette. The HDR color grading does wonders for the film. Look at the shot of Harper is standing at attention before the military panel at the 9:24 mark. The image is absolutely transformed by the HDR grading, offering colors so much deeper, more naturally inclined that the Blu-ray looks flat and very washed out in comparison. But the UHD holds to a very natural color spectrum, yielding deep skin tones and effortlessly true to life military fatigue green. This shot is a tell-all for the whole image, which holds much the same characteristics of more vivid, more accurate colors, which extend all the way from more brilliant whites to deeper blacks. The sharpness and clarity also see a decently higher yield as well. There is not so much of a major transformation here, but viewers will note, and appreciate, the obvious uptick in image clarity and complexity that easily makes this the best home presentation on the market, even as the Blu-ray stands firmly on its own as a very solid image. With no serious source issues or encode blemishes this is a very fine UHD presentation indeed.

The Contractor 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Contractor features a DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 lossless soundtrack. The absence of a Dolby Atmos track is something of a surprise, but the 7.1 encode proves its worth with a perfect audio experience. The track offers everything in excellent, perfect proportion. Musical cues are intensely detailed and natural. Front end placement is wide and fully transparent; the speakers simply melt away and provide full-on natural audio bliss. Musical surround support is perfectly balanced, as is subwoofer support. Good natural ambience envelops the listener and draws the audience into the scene, such as when James meets with Rusty for the first time at the 23-minute mark. Saturating rain at the 30:40 mark soaks every speaker while a train rumbling across the stage at the 33:30 mark provides maybe the single best environmental audio cue in the film. Gunplay is obviously the highlight and produces some seriously intense bangs and impacts, not to mention bullets zipping through the stage, such as at the 81-minute mark when some suppressed rounds rip through a quiet scene. Listeners will feel the intensity of every gun battle, and then some, with forceful low end content and frighteningly enveloping surround content. Dialogue is clear and center focused for the duration.

The Contractor 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Considering its very poor box office performance, it is not a surprise to discover that The Contractor contains no supplemental content. No Blu-ray copy is included with purchase. However, Paramount has included a digital copy code voucher. This release also ships with a non-embossed slipcover.

The Contractor 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Contractor is actually a pretty good movie – it's a fine, generally fun, well executed, and well-paced watch – but it's not quite good or original enough to really warrant many future watches. This is the "on the run" Action-Thriller genre done well, even if it's simply a regurgitation of familiar bits and pieces from like-minded fare. Only a few in its class greatly outpace this one, but even still the film's lack of serious original character hinders all the other elements just enough to prevent this one from ascending well above the rest. It wants to, though, and it does flirt with excellence. Paramount's UHD is featureless, but the video and audio presentations are first rate, just as expected. Recommended, even without massive replay value.