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About five minutes into Triple 9, the star-studded heist film reveals its true identity. A handful of masked men we believe to be criminals (more on that later) played by an enormously-appealing cast familiar from film and television (much more on that later) have just completed a crackerjack bank take-down, exiting with the mysterious contents of a safety deposit box when things begin to go awry. Turns out, the weakest of their number succumbed to temptation mid-robbery and took along a bag of cash rigged with dye packets and smoke bombs. As the getaway van fills with thick reddish clouds, the bandits have little choice but to force a traffic collision and violent detour.
One member of the team, traveling separately a few car-lengths back as rear scout, encourages a round of gunplay to brush back bystanders, and, midst the ensuing fusillade of automatic-weapon-fire, a young woman is hit. This changes nothing about the story, of course. He does not order the shooting stopped nor rush to save the girl nor later question his life choices. He simply notices, and, by so doing, we notice. And the vicarious, Heat-stroking thrill of highly-skilled professionals extricating themselves from impossible circumstances every so slightly dims.
We soon learn the crew's a mix of ex-special forces (Chiwetel Ejiofor, Norman Reedus), current cops (Anthony Mackie, Clifton Collins Jr.), and one floundering former-policeman/soldier's-brother (Aaron Paul) all drawn together by the promise of easy cash. Stomping along their fringes are the frosted hairstyles of Kate Winslet, whose Jewish-Russian mafia empress wields leverage over the crew via Ejiofor's son with Winslet's sister (Gal Godot), and the unwise mustache of Woody Harrelson as a Major Crimes True-ish detective circling around Paul after crucial tip from trannie informant Michael K Williams.
Triple 9, in other words, enlists two bona fide movie stars alongside an Oscar nominee, an Emmy nominee, The Falcon, Wonder Woman, Daryl, Jesse Pinkman, and a cross-dressing Omar/Chalky White. In the middle stands Casey Affleck: Harrelson's family-man nephew and the fresh-faced new partner Mackie brings on an extended training day. He's also, lest we forget, Batman's brother and an ascending star his own self most recognizable from rather a different sort of heist film, but this isn't Ocean's 11 or even the Dirty Dozen. The men aren't paid for their efforts. Winslet's deliciously-named Irina Vlaslov demands one last job — a smash and grab at the local Homeland Security outpost (secret agent MacGuffinry usable as barter for her imprisoned husband's release), which requires a murdered officer (the titular 'triple 9' of cop lingo) to distract police presence. Young pup Affleck appears a heaven-sent fall guy right up until a sudden bout of mid-movie heroics saves Mackie's life and wins our sympathies, but, by then, the blood-dimmed tide has been well loosed.
The script, one of few remaining from that hallowed 2010 black list (Edge Of Tomorrow, American Hustle, Argo, Looper) showcasing the finest unproduced screenplays of a given year, embraces a streamlined formula for maximizing momentum with minimal exposition and an absolute disinterest in extraneous beats or unnecessary characters. It's sorta masterful, in a soulless way, but the, ahem, execution perhaps required a director with greater appreciation of life's rich tapestry than John Hillcoat. While much of his earlier work (Lawless, The Proposition) couldn't help but carry a whiff of genre romanticism, Triple 9 best resembles the unbearable bleakness of post-apocalyptic walkathon The Road. The look, the intermittent blare of restless electronica, the resolute opposition toward the fun and the funny – it's an unpleasant experience, really. Only Winslet's "Kosher Nostra"grande dame and a mush-mouthed Harrelson snorting the scenery as fast as he can seem to understand the story should by rights play as a permadeath Elmore Leonard yarn of unlikely criminals intersecting.
It's as if the creators wanted purely to recreate the chaotic grime of a forgotten late 70s/early 80s cult classic packed with familiar faces and beholden to no studio notions of audience satisfaction or narrative accessibility – genre-steeped films that, for all their brutalist watchability have no larger point than punishing the viewer who searches for one. We tend to enshrine such qualities when drowning in their opposite, but actively playing against time tested/franchise approved action-hooks feel just as reductive as by the numbers pandering. Los Angeles has been replaced by an Atlantan urban jungle drenched in either murky shadows or a peculiarly toxic sunlight. The movie's tint dial has been so severely tweaked that we're forever glimpsing edges of cerulean or hot pink: the sinister tinge of muted pastels caught between Miami Vice-themed porno and a chemical fire.
It's like the husk of a blockbuster has been (literally, in this case) bled of every conceivable pleasure-trigger. The moments of violence are intentionally jarring and the camera lingers not expectantly with protagonist but dispassionately upon the victim. The extended thrill of Harrelson's car speeding hell-for-leather across all highway lanes winds up intercut with scenes highlighting the essential pointlessness of his mad dash. When the closest that we come to a hero executes the worst of the villains, retribution still occurs well off-screen.
There are benefits to this, true. In so unabashedly cliched a picture, almost every death comes as a surprise, and the nervous energy never slackens. For that matter, the underlying message could even be argued as socially responsible. Murder begets murder, and crime does not pay. All the same, decency's not exactly held up as an ideal. There are no believable characters nor coherent world-view. Cut away all the Hollywood bullshit from a star-studded heist film, and you're left with the thudding wrongness of ordering salads from Burger King. There's every reason to rail against the pre-fab disposability of escapist slaughter but, when in Rome, maybe just enjoy the gladiators?
Willamette Week