Reception

Contraband opened from mixed to negative reviews. Based on 94 reviews, the film currently holds a 46% "rotten" score from Rotten Tomatoes with the consensus saying, "It's more entertaining than your average January action thriller, but that isn't enough to excuse Contraband's lack of originality and unnecessarily convoluted plot." 

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times felt that "Contraband involves a lot of energy," but he was growing "tired of violent retreads of these heist elements." Tom Long of The Detroit News criticized the film for having "too much plot and too little character" and concluded that it "comes off the factory floor with its engine running and ready to drive. But the ride feels overly familiar." Claudia Puig of USA Today called "the 'one last job' trope a particularly tired one" and remarked that while it "has a few moments of tension," the film "adheres to a predictable heist formula hardly worth trafficking in." Andrew O'Hehir of Salon characterized the film as "exactly the sort of movie that Hollywood specializes in, the kind which seems on paper as if it ought to be entertaining, but winds up a massive and chaotic drag" and observed that "it's much more like a cynical hash job, whose faux-realistic manner can't hide all the hackneyed crime-movie situations."

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone thought the film "goes down in a sea of Hollywood clichés" and that Mark "Wahlberg could sleepwalk through this role, and does. See this movie and you'll surely follow his lead." Kyle Smith derided the film, noting that "watching a hero progress due in large part to lucky breaks and idiot moves by others does not make a movie" and that "it's puzzling why anyone considered this script worth shooting." Scott Tobias of NPR dismissed the film as a "mediocre thriller," something "to be remembered, vaguely." Rafer Guzman of Newsday expressed disappointment that "a little action is all you'll get" and opined that the film "fails by overreaching: It aspires to the heightened drama of The Departed but lands instead in the bargain bin of forgettable action product."

Justin Chang of Variety praised the film as "reasonably swift and effective" and for taking "a hard-driving line of action and a commitment to one-damned-thing-after-another storytelling that carries it past any number of narrative speed bumps and preposterous detours." Michael O'Sullivan of The Washington Post compared the film to "an Ocean's Eleven movie, minus the glamour," saying that it was "taut and suspenseful for the most part." Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly stated that the film, "while often grungy and far-fetched, does keep you watching. And in January, that's recommendation enough."