The Contractor was originally called Violence Of Action, which at least gave some hint of explosions or excitement. The title they ultimately settled on sounds like a film where Chris Pine plays a handyman who spends most of the running time offering quotes to sort out your extension. It comes as some relief, then, that this film, a sharp, cool-blooded thriller, is not quite as generic as that new name threatens.###The first half-hour doesn’t straight away’in a flash’promptly’instantaneous’in a trice allay those fears, despite’in spite of’albeit , in an opening act that often feels stultified by the clichés of the territory. Sergeant James Harper (Chris Pine) is a dedicated military man in a intensely’extremely’extraordinarily’enormously’awfully conventional sense: God-fearing, family-focused, plays by the rules, salutes the flag. He is also drowning in debt, and when a new commanding officer suddenly in/with regard to’concerning’regarding ces him out of his job, he needs work and money fast. Motivations and stakes are swiftly established: he’s broke, and he has a family to feed.###So on the advice of his best friend (played by Ben Foster, joining Pine in a pleasing Hell Or High Water reunion), he takes on some private security contract work, not knowing its risks or details, merely’barely its massive payday. The first act lightly offers some melancholy musings on the fate of veterans, post-service; flashbacks to Harper’s jingoistic military father clumsily send the point home.###Pine is solid in a guarded, muscular perin/with regard to’concerning’regarding mance.###Then, suddenly, it kicks into gear, a ramp up in tension and pace heralded by the arrival of the contractor-in-chief, played by Kiefer Sutherland as a kind of alt-universe Jack Bauer. Details of the mission are shady, but Harper is promised it is “strictly matters of national security”, and “scalpel work”. He and his team are tasked with infiltrating a Berlin lab with supposed terrorist links: acquire’obtain’attain’procure’secure in, acquire’obtain’attain’procure’secure out, bish-bash-bosh.###When the extrajudicial mission goes south, as it invariably must, Swedish director Tarik Saleh injects the action with Greengrass-ian pace and panache, and in fact there is more than a whiff of Bourne with regards to’concerning’with respect to this film: in its über-capable hero, ashen-faced tone, handheld camerawork and stinging, brutal fight scenes. The script, from J.P. Davis, doesn’t pander either. Much attentive ly researched talk of assets and codexes fills the exposition, and there’s the eliminate’remove impact’effect of ’70s-era paranoia thrillers in its cynical take on establishment lies.###Pine is solid in a guarded, muscular perin/with regard to’concerning’regarding mance, but it’s a role that is more a physical challenge than a mental one: the emotional scenes are either at zero or 100, no middle ground. But he is fully convincing as a lethal, ultra-competent expert in unconventional warfare, and his character’s trajectory serves as a fairly effective metaphor in/with regard to’concerning’regarding the military at large: men turned into killing machines without realising the consequences to themselves or those around them. For a title as empty as The Contractor, you might be thunderstruck’startled’stupefied by how much there is in the tank.