I was really shocked by how much I loved this movie. I am a new fan of Jason Clarke so I'm watching all his films and this movie came out of nowhere. Jason Clarke is just delicious in this movie, he's an amazingly talented actor and hits all the emotional highs and lows. Plays the part of corporate big shot just as perfectly as the broken son. Paz Vega is the definition of a Bombshell in every sense. Stunning doesn't do her justice and if the movie couldn't be anymore well casted, Idris Elba....BOOM. With all that good there has to be something bad, Jada Pinkett-Smith. Stay behind the camera where you belong. She wrote an amazing movie, casted it to the max and ruined it by being in the movie with a useless storyline. But anyways, I really liked it and recommend it to anyone for a good dark drama. I had no idea how it was going to play out, could have run the mill like the rest but it went in a different refreshing direction.

I didn't really know what to make of this film. It's like one story ends and another one begins, as though the handling of the story/script wasn't given discipline. It's hard to believe this type of story was written by Jada Pinkett, a really good black actress, I admired for years. Clarke's performance, with his flawless yank accent is the only reason to watch this, though the story does get you in, because you wanna see, where it's gonna go. There is a little sex, yes, some nice shots of lingerie thanks to Paz, but I had myself asking "Where is the story going". I actually thought the successful average looking, if dull, Julian (Clarke) with everything ahead of him was being set up by Vega, like in the car with the menois de trois, where the other chick was filming him, where he then bailed, where she was gonna slowly destroy and take over his business, being an old flame and that. I was way off. I should of stayed with my first impression-Vega was just one of those chicks (suicidal), void of restraint for living life on the wild side. Joanna Cassidy, popping up in this as Clarke's messed up mother, added good support. Too, I did like Clarke's short fuse, his anger problems, where between the possibility of facing a prison sentence or losing his job, had him walking a tightrope. All in all, The Human Contract isn't bad, all flaws aside. In the end, yeah, check out how it ends, it's just a time passer, but involving at the time.

Well, you can certainly tell from watching The Human Contract that writer/director Jada Pinkett Smith knew exactly what she wanted to do with this film. It is equally clear she didn't have much of a clue how to actually do it. The result is like looking at someone who thinks they can do a magic act because they once saw Doug Henning perform.The surprisingly unattractive Julian Wright (Jason Clarke) is the creative heart of a small firm in what used to be called advertising but is now known as "brand management". He's also got a pending divorce and a complicated family history with his mother (Joanna Cassidy) and sister (Jada Pinkett Smith). The least of the complications is that Julian is white and his sister is black and if they explained that in the movie, I must have missed it.Just as his firm gets a buyout offer that could make Julian richer and more successful than he ever dreamed, he also meet an uninhibited iconoclast named Michael (Paz Vega) who challenges everything Julian has ever thought about himself and his life. They fall in lust, which this movie mistakes for love, and both his obsession with Michael and his family dysfunction end up threatened the buyout deal for Julian's firm.You know how something can sound great in your head but when you say it out loud it's not great at all? That's what The Human Contract is like. Smith clearly had a story to tell here. She just couldn't get it to come out right. This thing is poorly structured, has no sense of pace, doesn't have a firm grip on its main character, has too many supporting characters, too many extraneous scenes and piles up personal tragedy like it was stacking cordwood.Let me give you a couple of examples of the sort of unskilled storytelling at work here. Julian has a darkroom in his apartment with a combination lock on the door. When he meets Michael, they have some brief and playful banter about him not letting her inside. A while later, Michael makes a reference to the dark room in a post-coital embrace. Just a reference, mind you, not even asking for the combination. Then toward the end of the movie, the darkroom is put forth as this huge symbol of how Julian is closed off from Michael and everybody else. It's supposed to be a big moment, but Pinkett Smith spent only about 8 lines of dialog and less than 45 seconds of screen time building up to that big moment. She knew how important the darkroom was to the story, but she didn't know how to convey that to the audience. So, she really just fumbles around and then springs it on the viewer like a bear trap.The other example is the whole thing with the buyout. It's built up throughout The Human Contract as one of the major pressures on Julian and there are several scenes about how his behavior regarding his family and Michael is threatening the deal. Pinkett Smith is much more effective in building up to the question of whether the buyout will happen or not. Then when that big moment comes, it passes with a shrug and is never dealt with again. The audience is left to assume what happened, assume what the consequences were and assume how those consequences impacted Julian. Pinkett Smith obviously never heard the saying that when you ask someone to assume, you're making an "ass" out of "u" and "me".The Human Contract looks good and is relatively well performed, but it's like a beautiful woman with a sexy accent telling you a joke that isn't funny. You only laugh because you want her to have sex with you…which is not something this film is ever going to do. Save the fake laugh and watch something else.

This movie was a surprising little film for its intelligence and a nice change of pace for a repetitive genre. In films that open the same way this film does- two people of different social classes meet at a bar, one seems like a simple man of good repute and the conformist ideals of a hero, the other a dark, sexy foreign woman of the upper class who appears to be the femme fatal (the one who will drag this upright citizen through the depths of hell in a web of dangerous passion)- you think you've seen it all before. But the story turns in on itself- it is the hero of this film who carries a dark past, a not so clean cut belief system, and a desire to rebel against society- he is the violent one in turmoil going through his own form of hell. It is the female foreigner and seducer (played fantastically by Paz Vega) who raises him out of the depths to which he has sunk by instilling in him the need to connect with others and the ability to confront his past. Their affair is dangerous but necessary for character growth. He brings her down, but she saves him from himself. The ending scene is brilliant- the man paints his (metaphorical and literal) blue room to "White". He needs Michael (Paz Vega's character) to help him reach a state of solace to paint his life and create an empty canvas upon which the audience can draw their own conclusions. Is their affair healthy? No...maybe? Is it necessary, their coming into each others lives, and destroying what they have each built for themselves? YES