Review of Triple Frontier (2019) by Odjento — 26 Feb 2016

Triple 9 is one film that looks promising at the start, but drops quickly and hardly even attempts to redeem itself.

The film stars a Triple A cast of Chiwetel Ejiofor, Aaron Paul, Woody Harrelson, Anthony Mackie, Kate Winslet, Norman Reedus, Casey Affleck and Gal Gadot. Great line up right?

So why does this film suck?

The film starts off with a rather intriguing bank robbery, which is reasonably well paced. Blood starts pumping and you feel like you’re in for a ride. Then, it ends. Sure this is the set up for the story in a way but there was no indication to the fact that they had gotten away until suddenly they’re all in a car park. The premature end really drops you and only sets up for the films self-destructive path ahead.

The film proceeds by splitting the characters up to show the different narratives that are happening so that they can all wind up joining together later on. However, transitions between each story are never made and instead it switches from one narrative to another without any real lead in or link between them. The film becomes a cacophonic amount of events that happen that you never really get a grasp on why they happen or what significance they have; they just happen. The film becomes nauseating to watch because of this, and the criticisms don’t stop there.

The characters in the film are hardly ever given any real justice to become interesting, relatable or just understandable for their situations, which coordinates itself into making plain characters that you don’t even care for whether they live or die. Aaron Paul gets type-casted as the problematic junkie and Chiwetel is meant to be the driving force of the film but never really comes across as engaging enough for the audience to care about other than the fact that he has a son which no relationship is ever really built between. Gal Gadot gets literally about 5 minutes of screen time and is used with no taste, and Kate Winslet is just a stone-faced stereotypical Russian mob boss we’ve always seen before. Casey Affleck never really comes across as relatable due to his incessant gum chewing and Woody Harrelson gets no real background to know what kind of character he even is; he is more just there in the film the fill screen time and all his scenes seem jumbled and odd. The main actors that stick out are actually Anthony Mackie, who plays one of the crooked cops and Clifton Colin Jr, who plays his role great in seeming so calm whilst being so involved.

Where credit is due however is a section in the middle of the film in which the police storm a building with riot shields to track down a criminal, in which tension is built up well and it seems pretty realistic in how police would raid a house potentially carrying firearms.

Overall, the film is drab, pretty miserable and feels incomplete. Not even a phenomenal cast such as exhibited can save a poorly structured and written film.

A very unsatisfying and nauseating watch.

3.