The Contractor — brisk thriller set in the murky world of the private military

Where would we be without chemistry? The title of Bourne-ish thriller The Contractor suggests a solo operation, and the story finds one man in a bind: Chris Pine cast as James Harper, a US special forces lifer left out in the cold. Pine is that underrated resource, a credible action hero who can also convince as a human being.

But the film leans hard on a double act too. The cue is Hell or High Water, the fine 2016 neo-Western in which Pine and Ben Foster played Texan brothers fallen on desperate times. The Contractor isn’t a patch on that film, but someone behind the scenes was clearly a fan, reuniting the pair and providing the movie’s best moments in the process.

Still, Pine takes centre stage, his performance mirroring the brisk efficiency with which the story unpacks itself. See James the doting husband and father; James the hyper-competent soldier, managing a knee wrecked in action; James brusquely discharged for illicit use of painkillers. What that leaves is the lucrative murk of the private military, now home to former comrade Foster. Here the characters aren’t biological brothers, but fraternally bonded anyway. The easy mesh of the actors sells us the relationship: Foster the tinder-dry joker to Pine’s quiet man.

In Hell or High Water the plot unfolded in the aftershock of the 2008 financial crash. Now the economic crisis is that facing American veterans. Enter Kiefer Sutherland as the garrulous boss of a private security firm, tending tomatoes and referencing Erik Prince, founder of industry giant Blackwater, in terms best described as colourfully unflattering.

The real world lends the movie gravity — but only for so long, it turns out. With Pine and Foster sent to Berlin on a rabbit-hole mission, director Tarik Saleh pivots into a straightforward shoot ’em up. No disaster. Saleh is good at the visual mechanics, adroit in using a real city as backdrop. Chaos deftly spills across Alexanderplatz and the sloped banks of the river Spree.

If The Contractor was only ever going to be a functional thriller, that much would be plenty. The snag is the trace of a more ambitious film beneath, one that would have driven the dramatic stakes higher than the curiously muted affair we end up with. Pine and Foster make it pop even then — but, as their characters learn, not every job deserves professional excellence.

★★★☆☆

On Prime Video in the UK from May 6