The Contract: Grade C

C

The Contract (2006)

Morgan Freeman, John Cusak. Director Bruce Beresford

Freeman can do a menacing bad guy, but he wasn’t very bad in this movie. He is an ex-government assassin (a lot of those on the loose, judging by Hollywood), now a mercenary hit man. The govt thinks his latest contract is on the president so they are in hot pursuit. Improbably, he finds himself separated from his team (why he needs a team at all is unclear), washed up on a riverbank (but unwrinkled and hardly wet) in the beautiful Cascade mountains in Washington. Cusack and his son, on an unlikely camping trip without a tent, find him and hold him at gunpoint because they believe the dying words of a nearby guy who claims to be a federal marshal. Freeman is inexplicably docile as they trek him through the woods, pursued by his evil team wearing night vision goggles, and also by “bad” govt agents who want everyone exterminated to avoid unspecified embarrassment. Imagine the gunfights! Including very loud choppers! What could be more exciting! Freeman and Cusack do their best, but they have nothing to work with.