SPOILER ALERT !!
THE CONTRACTOR, which comes out July 10th, is probaly the best DTV Wesley Snipes picture so far. Sure, it’s got that usual DTV vibe – Avid farts, cheesy electronical music, somber tone, not gonna make you smile or laugh too much, definitely not original in any way. But for this type of movie it’s pretty solid, and it takes advantage of Wesley’s talents. He runs alot, he gets in some shootouts, some car stunts, one quick but impressive fight. But most of all they let him act. He plays the sort of quiet, unfriendly-but-ultimately-kind badass he excels at. He gets to communicate what’s going on with facial expressions and posture more than with words, which is his thing. He gets some good bonding moments, including with his adversary after he mortally wounds him. In a DTV movie if there’s anything other than black and white/good and evil, any grey area at all, it deserves a shiny star on its sticker chart. I like that kind of shit.
When I got a screener for THE CONTRACTOR I got kind of nervous because I hadn’t seen his last one, THE MARKSMAN. And since the front cover for THE CONTRACTOR calls him “the world’s greatest marksman” I thought this might be an unadvertised sequel like Seagal’s BLACK DAWN was to THE FOREIGNER. (read the rest of this shit…)
