Outside of the Star Trek movies, Chris Pine has yet to find a niche for himself as a leading man. Case in point: 2022’s The Contractor, a film that barely made $1 million at the US box office.

A sergeant with the US Special Forces, James Harper (Pine) becomes involuntarily discharged after he uses banned drugs to deal with injuries. In desperate need of money, he connects with old friend Mike Denton (Ben Foster) to get a job with a private paramilitary company.

On his first assignment, James goes to Germany to track a scientist named Salim Mohsin (Fares Fares) who authorities claim works with ISIS. This operation goes wrong and leaves James in a perilous situation.

That all sounds perilously close to Textbook Military Thriller territory. Does Contractor manage to find anything new or at least semi-unusual to do with the formula?

Nope, though Contractor does come with more serious aspirations. During its first act, the film attempts to give us a look at the reality experienced by many military personnel.

James serves as a representation of the way the service chews up and spits out its members. In this way, Contractor hints at a dark underbelly to these experiences.

However, this all remains firmly on the surface. James, wife Brianne (Gillian Jacobs) and young son Jack (Sander Thomas) all exist as generic types intended to show the struggles that result from military service.

Contractor also hints at James’ dark past with a problematic father. We see flashbacks that allude to these issues from his youth, such as when the elder Harper (Dean Ashton) forces the adolescent James (Toby Dixon) to get a tattoo at much too early an age.

I guess these toy with the concept of “toxic masculinity” and how it harms developing children, but the scenes feel out of touch with the rest of the movie. Like the parts with James’ family, they tend to come across as windowdressing to give the film some delusions of substance that it can’t redeem.

Once James embarks on his mission, Contractor largely abandons these pretensions. Oh, it nods back at them occasionally, but they mean little.

Instead, we find ourselves with a low rent Bourne movie, and one that requires radical inconsistency from its lead character. In the interest of spoiler avoidance, I won’t mention specifics, but the story forces James to act in violent ways that don’t make sense for an ostensibly heroic “good guy” character.

Honestly, not much of the plot ever seems especially grounded or logical anyway. Contractor embarks on a winding path of lies and double crosses that aspires to tension but instead just results in boredom.

Despite the efforts of that first act, we never really bond with James, and as mentioned, his subsequent actions seem likely to make us even less warmly inclined toward him.

If Contractor at least boasted some taut action, perhaps it could compensate for its narrative and character flaws. However, the movie generally proceeds down a slow, dull path that rarely bothers to bring us stabs at vivid battles.

All of this leads toward a stale and inert attempt at a thriller. Contractor lacks neither the emotional impact or action punch it needs to become a quality effort.

The Contractor appears in an aspect ratio of approximately 2.35:1 on this Blu-ray Disc. Expect a generally strong image here.

Overall sharpness remained good. A smattering of wider elements could seem a little soft, but those didn’t create real distractions.

Instead, the movie tended to be accurate and concise. I noticed no shimmering or jaggies, and the film lacked edge haloes or source flaws.

The palette opted for a focus on the usual teal, with a lean toward the grey. Within stylistic choices, the hues looked fine, if not memorable. HDR added some range to the colors, but the monochromatic nature of the image limited that impact.

Blacks were deep and dense, while low-light shots depicted fairly appropriate clarity, although some shots appeared a bit on the dim side. HDR gave contrast and whites added oomph, though again, the nature of the cinematography restricted visual appeal. Anyway, the image seemed to be more than satisfactory.

Note that although Paramount generally opts for Dolby Vision with their 4K UHD releases, Contractor lacked that coding and stayed solely with standard HDR10.

With a few action scenes, the movie’s DTS-HD MA 7.1 mix often opened up to give us active information on a handful of occasions. These used the various speakers to create an involving, effective sense of these situations and circumstances.

The elements meshed together well and moved in a satisfying manner. However, the film came with fewer of these than one might anticipate from a story of this sort, so the soundfield remained subdued much of the time.

Audio quality also pleased. Music was peppy and full, while dialogue sounded accurate and concise.

Effects demonstrated good clarity and range, with fine low-end response as necessary. This was a fairly effective but not quite great track.

The disc comes with zero extras – not even previews or a trailer.

Although it occasionally aspires to greater thematic substance, The Contractor fails to ignite. It works neither as a character drama or a spy thriller. The 4K UHD brings largely positive picture and audio but it lacks bonus materials. This becomes a wholly mediocre project.