At the moment, for the US to lecture any other country about freedom of speech has become a joke. THE CONTRACTOR (2022) is a good examples of American cinema’s limits on critiques of the state, limits that have always been there but now seem more exposed. Tarik Saleh’s most famous works, the Cairo Trilogy, are scathing, funny, dark critiques of the Egyptian State’s culture of corruption that could only be made outside Egypt (the financing is an amalgamation of Swedish, Danish, French and other moneys). THE CONTRACTOR  is Saleh’s only American film and it suffers for being so.

James Harper (Chris Pine) a veteran of various duties is discharged from the army, without pension or medical benefits, for taking steroids necessary for him to overcome injuries incurred on previous tours of duty and continue in the army.The first part of the film overeggs this injustice, showing us Harper as a devoted family man, a regular churchgoer, from an army family dedicated to the service for generations.How does he now provide for his family? By becoming a private contractor. He gets lots of offers but doesn’t want to become a mercenary. Mike (Ben Foster), his best friend, tells him of Rusty Jennings (Keifer Sutherland), who runs a private militia but for the Department of Defence. They pay less, work around the law, but for righteous causes.

When Harper goes to see Rusty, Rusty tells him, ‘We gave them our minds, bodies and spirits and they chewed us up and spit us out. Left us with fear, rage, uncertainty, disillusionment, a sense of abandonment, betrayal and finally a sense of self-loathing and guilt, as if somehow everything that happened to us was our own goddamn fault,’ It’s a great speech and I suspect Sutherland took on the role primarily to be able to say those words. But the film chickens out after that, compromises, and turns routine.

Harper might as well have turned mercenary and gone for the cash because this para-governmental operation is just as dirty as any other. The mission involves stealing a scientific formula that they’re told is harmful but the scientist (Saleh regular Fares Fares) in fact had invented a vaccine that he wanted to make available for free. Harper ends up killing a good man, a family man who believed in science and wanted to contribute to the social good to that mutinational pharmaceutical companies may continue to make money. He’s been lied to, chewed up and spit out just as in the army. In fact, his operation now sets out to kill him: he’s become a loose end. Harper succeeds in getting back home only to find  the  best friend he thought dead is alive and well. Did the man whose life he’s already saved twice betray him? They, eventually team up and get rid of Rusty so that Harper may be reunited with his family.

The film’s action is serviceable, the critique muted. The sub-plot about relations between fathers and sons, sentimental and extraneous. It’s not as funny, sharp or dark as Saleh’s other work. The ending should be much bleaker than it is. But THE CONTRACTOR is not a conventional action thriller either. I liked it a lot more most. It’s interesting to see Pine and Foster reunited after HELL OR HIGH WATER (David Mackenzie, 2016). Eddie Marson has a lovely moment as the head of a half-way house who tragically takes in Harper at a critical juncture; and the individual shots, framings and compositions are just as imaginative as we’ve come to expect from Saleh. But the script is neither fish nor fowl; the film, a work that doesn’t’ live up to its intentions. American cinema can do a muddy critique of something vaguely governmental or paramiltary but can’t seem to critique directly much less surgically, as we see so clearly in Saleh’s other works. I don’t think the fault is with Saleh or the cast.

José Arroyo