It's raining Kates

MANILA, Philippines - Not Middleton. Beckinsale.

A week after seeing her fight off Lycans, vampires, and everything in between (via Underworld: Awakening), my wife and I witnessed Kate Beckinsale ranged against drug-crazed criminals in Contraband.

What’s a girl to do? Well, just grin and bear it apparently — and happily take the multi-million-dollar paycheck. Sigh. Ain’t life tough?

Contraband stars Mark Wahlberg as Chris Farraday, a reformed legendary smuggler who (surprise, surprise) is forced back into the fray to save his brother-in-law Andy’s (Caleb Landry Jones) life.

We find our Kate playing, well, Kate — the dutiful wife of Chris who unwillingly accedes to his proposal to do one last job to save her idiot brother (oops, did I say that out loud?) from the ruthless Tim Briggs (Giovanni Ribisi). Chris needs to cough up $700,000 in two weeks or else we won’t have a movie.

With that out of the way, Chris does an Ocean’s Eleven — assembling a group of cohorts to pull a “funny money” deal off in Panama. Indeed, this heist movie has an O11 feel, except that you substituted the sleekness with violence and obscenities.

A remake of the original 2008 Icelandic film Reykjavík-Rotterdam (which, incidentally, starred Contraband director Baltasar Kormákur), this flick doesn’t promise too many surprises even as it doesn’t stretch the imagination. Thankfully, it will not slow down much and give you pause to realize this.

Fast-paced and action-packed, Contraband is standard Hollywood hard candy with a curious mix of bad guys. Ribisi is one of my favorite role players ever, and he can come off the bench as a sixth man in my Hollywood dream team anytime. Diego Luna, who credibly played a lovestruck airport employee in the Tom Hanks starrer Terminal, appears here as the counterfeiter Gonzalo.

That being said, do not ascribe blame to these two actors for their apparent lack of intelligence playing their roles. Antagonists worth their airtime are supposed to display and exercise some intelligence to go with their bad-guy bravado. Gonzalo is consummately stupid. At least Briggs has a narcotic excuse for his lack of smarts.

Meanwhile, it’s obvious that Wahlberg is most comfortable when he’s dispensing justice and smack downs. Contraband is up his alley.

As for our heroine? It’s refreshing to see Kate get out of her catsuit and trenchcoat for a shot at domesticity — even if it involves getting her butt kicked. I was half expecting her to bite back literally and sink her fangs into Brigg’s neck. On second thought, she might have gotten high.

Contraband’s swift story is further enabled jerky camerawork that becomes impatient in the tale’s slow points — as if egging the action to commence without delay. It also gives a good immersive, spectator view for us on the other side of the screen.

Kate must be proud to see both of her films do well at the box-office — with Underworld: Awakening holding steady with $12.4M, second to The Grey. Contraband is five slots away with $6.7M. Not a bad start to 2012 for the Non-Middleton Kate.

All told, Contraband is a break from all the thinking you will be forced to do in awards-level flicks and their ilk. This is why people enjoin you to “Relax, see a movie!”