{"id":1428204,"date":"2022-04-11T08:01:14","date_gmt":"2022-04-11T12:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1428204"},"modified":"2022-04-11T08:01:32","modified_gmt":"2022-04-11T12:01:32","slug":"chris-pine-elevates-the-plight-of-veterans-in-patriotic-thriller-the-contractor-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/chris-pine-elevates-the-plight-of-veterans-in-patriotic-thriller-the-contractor-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Pine Elevates The Plight Of Veterans In Patriotic Thriller \u2018The Contractor\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fchris-pine-elevates-the-plight-of-veterans-in-patriotic-thriller-the-contractor-2%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1428204&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/trailer-for-chris-pine-and-ben-fosters-mercenary-action-thriller-the-contractor-1.jpeg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>On the run from who or what, he doesn\u2019t know. Ex-soldier-turned-mercenary Chris Pine is told by an operative whose safe house Pine is hiding out in, \u201cIt\u2019s much easier to kill than survive.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That bit of dialogue cuts to the heart of \u201cThe Contractor.\u201d Pine, who plays an ex-Green Beret discharged, honorably but sans pension and health insurance because of a pain killer addiction for a wounded knee, is vulnerable in every sense of the word. <\/p>\n<p>For Pine, survival doesn\u2019t just mean dodging bullets and inflicting karate chops, but also finding a way to escape the crushing economic circumstances of being a soldier discarded callously by his government.<\/p>\n<p><em>Editor\u2019s note: spoilers ahead. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>Faced with mounting bills, and notices of having his electricity shut off, Pine offers his services as a Special Ops soldier to a mysterious contractor (Kiefer Sutherland). Sutherland has shed his youthful, vampiric looks that he really didn\u2019t make up for in \u201cThe Lost Boys,\u201d and now looks like a Nordic Nazi. <\/p>\n<p>That suits his role in the film as a rancher\/fascist. Sutherland is in good form here as a symbol of toxic masculinity co-joined to monopolistic capitalism \u2014 a corporate type perfectly willing to let desperate people get their \u201chands dirty\u201d and then cut them loose, or more likely have them killed.<\/p>\n<p>The plot is muddled. It\u2019s something about Pine contracted to assassinate a Syrian biologist who may be developing a lethal virus \u2014 welcome to the age of Covid \u2013 for Al Qaeda. The chase sequences, where Pine races through German underground sewers, are competent, albeit unspectacularly done. The \u201cBourne Identity\u201d films and the Daniel Craig-powered Bonds do this much better.<\/p>\n<p>For an action film, the pace is maddeningly slow, and the action scenes never really pick up the pace. The action is done in shadows and the rapid cutting makes it hard to determine who is hitting who. But the film has Chris Pine, who carries the movie admirably. <\/p>\n<p>Pine, who managed to register onscreen next to the charismatic Gal Gadot in \u201cWonder Woman,\u201d has a Clark Gable-like effortless charm. Like Bradley Cooper, he doesn\u2019t force himself on the audience and doesn\u2019t seem to realize how handsome he is.<\/p>\n<p>This is his most stoic part yet. His dialogue is relatively minimal, and he uses silence to convey desperation as in the scene where he discovers his benefits have been taken away by the military he once served.<\/p>\n<p>Pine is indispensable, but what really elevates this routine action thriller is its message about how the nation abandons its veterans. As in real life, several of the veterans in the film chose suicide. Pine, a self-described \u201cleft-leaning liberal,\u201d nevertheless does service to ex-soldiers by turning in a non-whiny performance where, instead of marching with Bernie Sanders, he tries to do something individually about his family\u2019s plight.<\/p>\n<p>There are father-son issues at play here, and they are effective. Pine had daddy issues with his ex-military jingoistic father, who gifted his son on his birthday with a visit to the tattoo parlor. Still, one is left to wonder why his childhood didn\u2019t steer him away from the military. This is unexplored, and the filmmakers miss a big opportunity to show Pine is admirably patriotic in spite of his father.<\/p>\n<p>Pine is a much more gentle father who nevertheless has difficulty connecting with his own son because much of the child\u2019s life he was in the military overseas.<\/p>\n<p>At times, \u201cThe Contractor\u201d is confused about what it wants to be. Is it an action thriller with liberal overtones about dark, corporate conspiracies linked to addictive drugs? A message movie about a nation that should economically provide for its protectors? Or a chase film where the paranoia is all too justified?<\/p>\n<p>As such, the film at times feels weighed down by so many themes. For an action film, it is sparse on violence, and without Pine\u2019s stoic vulnerability, which makes you root for him, it doesn\u2019t even qualify for a Roger Moore Bond. <\/p>\n<p>For a message movie, the film is a hybrid. On one hand, it is the usual leftist broadside against unpoliced capitalism; on the other, it is patriotic about those who serve and how much we owe them.<\/p>\n<p>Given our cultural climate, the makers of \u201cThe Contractor\u201d should be commended for balancing their liberal sermonizing with a recognition that we should honor those who guard us while we sleep. In the 1970s, as in the CIA-bashing \u201cThree Days of the Condor\u201d (1975), the military was simply evil without any leavening patriotism. The Bourne movies, while delivering white-knuckled action scenes that, until Daniel Craig, \u201cout-Bonded\u201d Bond, made politically correct noises about the military without providing a plausible alternative on how to protect us.<\/p>\n<p>With its message of how the government economically deprived those who make the ultimate sacrifice, and despite its liberal bugaboos about corporations who enrich themselves by pushing addictive drugs, \u201cThe Contractor\u201d is a unique and long-overdue action thriller.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Ron Capshaw is a writer based in Florida.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On the run from who or what, he doesn\u2019t know. Ex-soldier-turned-mercenary Chris Pine is told by an operative whose safe house Pine is hiding out in, \u201cIt\u2019s much easier to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":611,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1428204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/611"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1428204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1428204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1428204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1428204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}