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.
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