Triple 9
Plot Overview:
A professional band of criminals and cops think they’re in for one final heist job – that is, until the Russian mob gets involved and police investigations continuously dig deeper and deeper.
Review:
Directed by John Hillcoat (The Road, Lawless), Triple 9 is a gritty, twisty heist film in the same vein as Michael Mann’s “Heat” and Ben Affleck’s “The Town” – though it’s ambitions often outreach it’s narrative scope. But, well-made in every other aspect, it (nearly) more than makes up for it.
Acting:
To start, the acting here is enthralling (particularly from Aaron Paul and Woody Harrelson) – the ensemble give no potboiler performances and they perfectly emphasize the stark grit and bleakness of the environment. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Clifton Collins Jr. are as sinister and intense as they’ve ever been; Casey Affleck brings the same passionate fire to the screen that we loved so much in “Gone Baby Gone”; but one acting gripe however is – while she is fittingly intimidating and really having a blast with the role – Kate Winslet’s Russian accent is pretty ‘in-and-out’ and butchered. Think not as bad as Tim Curry in “Congo”, but nowhere near as good as Robin Williams in “Moscow on the Hudson”.
While the performances are top-notch, the characters they’re fit for, however, are not up to par. Clichéd and underdeveloped to a fault, these are pretty standard characters we’d expect to see in a film of this nature: the good cop, the bad cop, the druggie(s), the careless one who messes it up for everyone, the scantly seen love interest, the mob boss, the self-professed ‘leader’ with little to no personality, the one who’s intimidating solely to be intimidating… all of whom are seen here front-and-center. But considering the actors they chose to play the parts, that’s certainly not enough to dissuade anyone from feeling for any of them – the lurid and tortured performances from the cast make up for the rudimentary characters they portray.
Directing:
This is an extremely well-directed film from a man who knows the craft through and through. The cinematography for the highway and action scenes is heart-racingly intense, and the subdued shots of lock-down conversations and revelations are wholly alluring; Matched with an incredible production drenched in a sharply contrasted color scheme consisting of bright reds and blues with gloomy greys and browns. Alongside this, characters are often beading with sweat and speaking over each other, adding to the restless feel that makes the suspense feel like the great heist epic and could have (and should have) been. Pair this with a pitch-perfect use of an array of different music, and you have some totally exceptional directing, which shines in the climax – where it’s entirely engrossing and masterful, not to be forgotten! In the end all of these techniques make for a graphic, moody atmosphere and a vigorous (albeit unfocused) tone. The director succeeds, it’s the script that fails him.
Writing:
Sadly, this is where the movie suffers. Just like “Black Mass”, this movie desperately needed to be longer – to achieve the epic status as “Heat” did before it. The narrative is unfocused, seemingly disjointed because it’s trying to stuff so much material into a just-shy-of two hour time frame. These plot points never seemed superfluous however, it instead struggles organizing the basic storytelling – introducing crucial characters and information seemingly at random without explanation and feeling like two totally different movies noticeably edited into one. This movie could have greatly benefited from an extra half-hour (at the least) to explain certain elements further and clean up the clutter that the editor made a smoothie out of.
The movie slows itself down and takes its time in the last act of the story, which is both good and bad. Good because it really shows and makes the story more compelling; bad because it makes the first acts of the movie seem that much more rushed and unfinished. Despite even this, in the movie’s final minutes when you’re finally tricked back into the swing of things, it closes with an open-ended, halted ending that leaves much unexplained.
End Thoughts:
I’ve been hyping this film for over a year, so naturally I’m probably more disappointed than most. This movie should have been great story-wise, but I still got a lot of enjoyment out of it. Even with the poor writing it succeeds in being compelling, well shot, (extremely) well acted, gritty fun that we haven’t seen in years. The pros outweigh the cons by a hair in “Triple 9” and fans of the genre or otherwise will find something to value in this action-packed, suspenseful, yet messy film. I give this film a generous 3 1/2 out of 5 stars.
