By iamsandykay on August 23, 2022 ( Leave a comment )

Show Review – The Contractor

Show Description:

Involuntarily discharged from the Army, a special forces sergeant lands a contract with a private underground military force. When his very first assignment goes awry, the elite soldier finds himself hunted and on the run, caught in a dangerous conspiracy and fighting to stay alive long enough to get home and uncover the true motives of those who betrayed him.

My Take:

Very slow start, convoluted flashbacks, intense action, then a forced ending.

This is one of those movies that start off in the middle of the scene. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really fill in the gaps along the way. An unusual use of flashbacks – that often I was both confused by and felt were pretty heavy handed – did not add to the plot or the character development. There are a few intense action/fight scenes that I will give credit to the choreographer, stunt people, and actors for creating, but none were amazing enough to save this movie.

Essentially no character development, resulting in not caring about any of them.

Something was missed here. Writing choices; directing choices; editing choices. I’m not sure where we lost some significant information, but it was missed. James Harper is a battered special forces soldier. There was no attempt to get us (the viewer) to really care about him at all. I felt bad that he was forced out of the military (for obvious health reasons), but even recognizing him dealing with PTSD and shellshock, I didn’t know much about him at all. And I barely cared. We know from the show description that he’s going to get betrayed and we can guess what’s going to happen next. I didn’t even find myself rooting for him to succeed in his anticipated vengeance plan.

The Final Verdict