The Contractor was initially referred to as Violence Of Motion, which at the least gave some trace of explosions or pleasure. The title they in the end settled on appears like a movie the place Chris Pine performs a handyman who spends a lot of the working time providing quotes to kind out your extension. It comes as some reduction, then, that this movie, a pointy, cool-blooded thriller, will not be fairly as generic as that new identify threatens.

The primary half-hour doesn’t instantly allay these fears, although, in a gap act that always feels stultified by the clichés of the territory. Sergeant James Harper (Chris Pine) is a devoted army man in a really conventional sense: God-fearing, family-focused, performs by the principles, salutes the flag. He’s additionally drowning in debt, and when a brand new commanding officer instantly forces him out of his job, he wants work and cash quick. Motivations and stakes are swiftly established: he’s broke, and he has a household to feed.

So on the recommendation of his finest good friend (performed by Ben Foster, becoming a member of Pine in a delightful Hell Or Excessive Water reunion), he takes on some personal safety contract work, not figuring out its dangers or particulars, solely its large payday. The primary act frivolously gives some melancholy musings on the destiny of veterans, post-service; flashbacks to Harper’s jingoistic army father clumsily ship the purpose residence.

Then, instantly, it kicks into gear, a ramp up in pressure and tempo heralded by the arrival of the contractor-in-chief, performed by Kiefer Sutherland as a sort of alt-universe Jack Bauer. Particulars of the mission are shady, however Harper is promised it’s “strictly issues of nationwide safety”, and “scalpel work”. He and his group are tasked with infiltrating a Berlin lab with supposed terrorist hyperlinks: get in, get out, bish-bash-bosh.

When the extrajudicial mission goes south, because it invariably should, Swedish director Tarik Saleh injects the motion with Greengrass-ian tempo and panache, and actually there may be greater than a whiff of Bourne about this movie: in its über-capable hero, ashen-faced tone, handheld camerawork and stinging, brutal battle scenes. The script, from J.P. Davis, doesn’t pander both. A lot rigorously researched speak of belongings and codexes fills the exposition, and there’s the clear affect of ’70s-era paranoia thrillers in its cynical tackle institution lies.

Pine is stable in a guarded, muscular efficiency, but it surely’s a task that’s extra a bodily problem than a psychological one: the emotional scenes are both at zero or 100, no center floor. However he’s totally convincing as a deadly, ultra-competent knowledgeable in unconventional warfare, and his character’s trajectory serves as a reasonably efficient metaphor for the army at massive: males was killing machines with out realising the implications to themselves or these round them. For a title as empty as The Contractor, you could be stunned by how a lot there may be within the tank.