Review: Triple 9

Triple 9 (15)

USA 2016 116 mins Dir: John Hillcoat Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Anthony Mackie, Casey Affleck, Kate Winslet, Woody Harrelson, Aaron Paul

It’s always an odd experience when a movie is comprised entirely of sequences reminding one of other, superior films. Unfortunately, Triple 9 is exactly that, an underwhelming thriller set in Atlanta evoking memories of Heat’s heist thrills and the scrappy, street-level energy of last year’s micro-budget gem Tangerine; would that it had any of their personality. Although the talent is very much on display in the form of a stunning, A-list cast and the presence of heavyweight Aussie director John Hillcoat, the movie is an oddly dull misfire.

Things get off to a murky start with a robbery sequence that fails to grip in the economical yet atmospheric manner of Michael Mann’s classic, simply because it takes so long to establish what is happening or why. When everything does start to come into focus after this baggy opener, we discover that a gang of crooks (led by 12 Years a Slave’s Chiwetel Ejiofor) are in cahoots with a bunch of corrupt cops (spearheaded by Captain America’s Anthony Mackie) at the behest of some seriously nasty Russian gangster types (Kate Winslet’s beehived, vowel-mangling monster is far and away the most memorable character but sadly underused).

Having accomplished this first heist, the ragtag mob are then blackmailed into committing another, even more difficult job; in order to do so, they must establish an elaborate distraction by killing a policeman, thereby initiating a ‘triple 9’ callout that will occupy and distract the vast majority of the city’s law enforcement. The fall-guy set up for this fate is Casey Affleck’s newly arrived, seemingly inexperienced detective, although he is ultimately shrewder and more resourceful than the scheming cops and criminals had anticipated. Needless to say, things soon erupt in inevitable bloodshed and carnage.

It’s material that ought to fall directly into Hillcoat’s wheelhouse: a story of violence and masculinity in crisis that promises to draw on the themes, Western conventions and knockout visceral impact of both The Proposition and Lawless. That the movie is also a contemporary tale as opposed to the period setting of those films (not to mention the futuristic context of apocalyptic drama The Road) also seems to promise something fresh from the director.

But it simply doesn’t come to life, convoluted plot machinations leading to confusion whilst the shouty yet underdeveloped characters are simply dull. The outstanding cast of actors certainly aren’t well served by their roles, bar Winslet and, possibly, Affleck, whose quiet intensity is put to far better use here than in dull ocean rescue drama The Finest Hours. Even so, one hopes that the likes of Woody Harrelson, here playing Affleck’s on-screen uncle and the sergeant investigating the chaos that unfolds, are put to better use in future; Aaron Paul meanwhile is stranded in a junkie role that appears to have been recycled wholesale from Breaking Bad, although a degree of menace must be attributed to Clifton Collins Jr. as a scheming detective with no qualms about eliminating those in his way.

“This is the street,” barks Mackie at one point, yet the aforementioned Tangerine (famously shot on a mobile phone with an anamorphic attachment) was palpably more honest, anarchic and compelling in the way it dealt with the miscreants and denizens of lower-class LA. When composer Atticus Ross cites the difficulties in scoring the movie due to the ever-changing nature of the final edit, one can’t help suspect he’s pinpointed the problem here: there may have been a gritty and riveting film in there somewhere, but in the end all sense of individuality appears to have be ironed out. It’s not a movie that will have audiences calling out for an emergency – but ironically, such an indistinct sense of personality turns out to be more lethal than if the movie was genuinely awful.

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