Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

The Contractor Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman March 29, 2020

Note: 'The Contractor' is currently only available as part of a two-film bundle with 'The Fan.'

The Wesley Snipes DTV film The Contractor is more like "DIY." The film is simple and unchallenging and offers a dearth of creative content but does manage just enough narrative and technical competency to skirt by on its otherwise bare bones essentials. The film is hardly what one would call "memorable" but strictly consumed as a mindless time waster most genre fans should find it a capable diversion.

The story is cut-rate, rote, and written straight out of the DTV Action movie playbook. It centers on a man named James Jackson Dial (Wesley Snipes), a black ops hitman who is called back into service to take out a target he missed years before while serving overseas. He makes the kill this time but is ultimately framed for a murder he didn't commit. Now, Dial is on the run and his only help comes from a girl named Emily Day (Eliza Bennett) whom he meets while holing up at a safe house.

The Contractor builds its foundation on a fairly standard suite of action elements: the usual car chases accompanied by rousing musical score, several shootouts, and character construction particulars. None of it moves the proverbial needle all that much, and even Snipes acts on autopilot, delivering a fair performance befitting the quality of the material, but he’s obviously not challenged to stretch. There are notes of The Professional running through the movie, but The Contractor is more a product of a simple formula than it is something with more teeth, more filmmaking chops, more meaningful drama, more highly charged action. It's on the upper end of the bottom tier, a good example of decently made but ultimately forgettable moviemaking.

The Contractor Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Contractor was shot on film and the Blu-ray image is quite nice in the aggregate. The image is pleasant, firm, and film-like. Grain is present and maintains a constant, satisfying, organic appearance that is flattering and never overbearing. Textural response is excellent, with close-ups in particular yielding some very impressive natural skin intimacies, such as pores. The entire image is firm and revealing, with nothing coming up short for visual robustness, even some of the film's darker shots. The picture's color palette is a little drab and flat. There's little, if any, punch and vibrancy, leaving the image looking a bit dingy and worn, but saturation within the film's more muted look is fine, from natural greens to red blood. Skin tones can look a bit pasty here and there but black levels are impressive, particularly around some darker interiors towards film's end. No major source blemishes or encode artifacts are in evidence. Well done, Mill Creek.

The Contractor Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

A DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack builds The Contractor's audio needs. The track is, much like its video counterpart, sturdy and appealing throughout. The track offers a number of sonic highlights, beginning with an airplane flyover, or without overhead channels active more like fly-through, in chapter one around the five-minute mark. It moves towards the stage's left side to good, deep, room-filling effect. Other high yield one-off sounds are scattered throughout, such as a chopper encircling the stage at the one hour mark. An impressive barrage of alarms and gunfire in chapter four punctuates a dizzying scene with lights blinking on and off in rapid succession. The climactic shoot-out delivers a steady stream of gunfire with impressive intensity, both as the shots ring out from guns and as bullets impact various surfaces. Some dialogue reverb may be heard in a cavernous locale at the same time. Atmospheric effects are gently and naturally immersive, ranging from light winds blowing through the stage in chapter two to mild city din heard at several junctures throughout. Dialogue is clear, well prioritized, and naturally positioned in a front-center location.

The Contractor Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of The Contractor contains no supplemental content. As it ships with the above-linked two-film bundle, a DVD copy is included.

The Contractor Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Contractor "Dials" up a smorgasbord of stale and uninteresting content, from a generic "framed-for-a-murder-he-didn't-commit" man on the run storyline to forgettable shootouts and car chases. Add in flat characters and blasé filmmaking and The Contractor really doesn't amount to much. Still, genre fans might well find it baseline competent and an acceptable brain-off 90 minute escape. Mill Creek's Blu-ray is understandably featureless but the studio does provide rather good video and audio presentations. Worth a look.