Country: United States
Genre: Drama
Director: Jada Pinkett Smith
Year: 2008
Rating: 
WORTH A LOOK
The Human Contract is that rarest of animals — an interesting, intelligent failure. Most of the time, movies, especially American movies, aim very low and broad, and even then can’t hit the target.
Julian Wright (Jason Clarke) is in brand management. That is to say, he makes his living by influencing how consumers think about the products he gets paid to promote. In other words, a very sophisticated type of mind control. The key word here is control. In the opening of the picture, Julian gets into a very interesting argument with Michael (a smoking hot Paz Vega), somehow he’s just met in a bar. Julian takes the position that for life to have meaning, it must be circumscribed by rules. Michael takes the opposite position, that discarding society’s rules and deciding for yourself is the only route to happiness. What they’re arguing about is the unspoken human contract — that we expect others to act within an agreed upon set of parameters.
So far, so good. Both characters are hyper-articulate, which is fine. It’s nice for a change to see intelligent characters who actually care about the big questions of life.
Then writer/director Jada Pinkett Smith introduces some thriller elements into the picture. The firm Julian works for might be bought out, making everyone in Julian’s company filthy rich, if Julian can convince the CEO of the new company that he has the best campaign for the company’s roster of iconic laundry detergent products (think Tide and Ivory Snow). The hitch? The CEO is a family values type, Jason has just started an affair with the irrepressible Michael, and he’s in the middle of a divorce.
A videotype of Jason having sex with Michael is introduced and immediately the wheels start turning. Could Michael be an agent of a rival company determined to sabotage Jason? According to Chechovian dramatic theory, if you introduce a gun in the first act, it must go off in the third. Somehow, we figure, that videotape is going to be involved.
******SPOILER ALERT**************
But no, the videotape is dropped, never to be heard from again. In fact, we never even find out if Jason’s firm gets bought out or not.
*********END OF SPOILER ALERT************
Now, writer/director Jada Pinkett Smith is obviously an intelligent woman. She knows she’s flying in the face of dramatic convention and audience expectations. In her mind, she’s like Paz Vega’s character Michael. Not for Jada the moldy dramatic conventions we’re all used to.
There’s only one problem. She uses conventional thriller cinematic language like crazy. The femme fatale who wears lingerie and plays sex games. The deal that could be endangered by scandalous conduct. The violent protagonist who loses control and beats people to a pulp. Julian’s sister, Rita (Jada Pinkett Smith) is married to a wife-beater. Julian’s mom is a bible quoting loony. Jada Pinkett Smith clearly likes her orange juice with plenty of pulp.
Even if Smith was going for a fairly conventional narrative arc, she has too many melodramatic elements in the stew. One wacko protagonist is enough. Julian’s family history is pure Southern Gothic. When you add to that Michael’s tragic past and anarchic sensibilities, it’s pure soap. Which may be the point. Maybe it’s not for nothing that the firm which is trying to buy out Julian’s company deals with laundry products. Maybe Jada Pinkett Smith is punking us. Maybe she’s ridiculing conventional melodramatic thrillers while trying to foist on us her spiritual and philosophic ideas.
Whatever she’s trying to do, it doesn’t work. The Human Contract fails to satisfy as a thriller, and the resolution of the philosophic content feels perfunctory.
Anyway, I get the feeling that the readers of this web site don’t like to have their heads played with. If a flick advertises itself as a melodramatic thriller, that’s what they expect, but I have to admit, I was intrigued by much of the content. I only wish that writer/director Jada Pinkett Smith would have had more respect for the needs of the audience. She could have had a meaningful discussion about control issues and delivered a sensual thriller at the same time.
Note: There’s nothing wrong with Jada’s command of the cinematic language. Her compositions are consistently stimulating and arresting. She moves the camera well. She writes naturalistic, thorny dialog. Her pacing is fine. She handles physical confrontations with aplomb. If Jada wants to make a good conventional thriller at some point, I have no doubt she’ll pull it off.
