David Mackenzie’s “Hell Or High Water” was, pun intended, a high watermark for genre filmmaking in 2016. The low-budget neo-Western became a critical darling straight out of the gate after it premiered at the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival that year. It went on to receive four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay for Taylor Sheridan, who has since expanded his genre credentials with “Wind River,” “Those Who Wish Me Dead,” and his “Yellowstone” TV empire.
READ MORE: ‘Violence Of Action’: Chris Pine, Ben Foster & Gillian Jacobs To Star In New Film
Sheridan’s script about bank-robbing brothers out to save their family’s legacy is great, but it would have received less praise without Chris Pine and Ben Foster as the leads. Now, the duo looks to recapture lightning in a bottle as they headline “The Contractor,” once known as “Violence Of Action.” The Europe-set black-ops thriller follows a paramilitary mission gone sour and one soldier’s attempt to make it home alive.
Here’s the film’s official synopsis:
Chris Pine stars in the action-packed thriller as Special Forces Sergeant James Harper, who is involuntarily discharged from the Army and cut-off from his pension. In debt, out of options and desperate to provide for his family, Harper contracts with a private underground military force. When the very first assignment goes awry, the elite soldier finds himself hunted and on the run, caught in a dangerous conspiracy and fighting to stay alive long enough to get home and uncover the true motives of those who betrayed him. Also starring Kiefer Sutherland, Ben Foster, Gillian Jacobs and Eddie Marsan.
Alongside Pine and Foster, “The Contractor” also stars Gillian Jacobs, Kiefer Sutherland, Eddie Marsan, and Nina Hoss. The cast also includes Amira Casar, Fares Fares, Florian Munteanu, JD Pardo, and Tait Fletcher. Swedish film and TV director Tarik Saleh, best known stateside for his work on the HBO show “Westworld,” directs a script by JP Davis. French cinematographer Pierre Aïm, who worked on the 1995 modern classic “La Haine,” is the film’s director of photography.
“The Contractor” is more a military movie than a Western, but with Pine and Foster playing off each other again, the film has loads of potential. See if the pair can recreate the same energy from “Hell Or High Water” when “The Contractor” hits theaters on April 1, 2022, from Showtime and Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment who bought the film from STX earlier this year. Check out the trailer below.