Review - Triple 9

Triple 9 is an Heist/Thriller film directed by John Hillcoat and has an impressive cast including; Casey Affleck, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Anthony Mackie, Aaron Paul, Clifton Collins, Jr., Norman Reedus, Teresa Palmer, Michael K. Williams, Gal Gadot, Woody Harrelson and Kate Winslet.
With a cast this fantastic and a director as talented as Hillcoat you would think Triple 9 would be a home run, unfortunately it isn't but it is still a film that is worth your time.



Triple 9 follows a group of criminals and corrupt cops who have are being blackmailed by the Russian Mafia. After doing a job for the mafia, the mafia demand another job done which is near impossible unless they pull off a Triple 9, which is the police code, for an 'officer down'. The story is very engaging, starting off with an exciting, engaging heist pulled off by the criminals we are following which sets the film up very well that remains interesting through-out, if not slightly predictable.

Car chase during the heist.

The short coming of the film is the development of the characters, which unfortunately they don't do a lot of. Its also hard to focus on character development when you don't have a true main character, i think that the film's main character if i had to chose would be Chris Allen (Affleck) but he is on screen as much as he is off with so many characters its hard to juggle them all, which the film doesn't do very well. The only characters that get real development through the film are the previously mentioned Chris Allen, Marcus Atwood (Mackie), Gabe Welch (Paul) and Michael Belmont (Ejiofor), while some get none at all like Chris Allen's wife, Michelle (Palmer) who is literally just the lovely wife that wants Affleck to be happy, the other 'character' with no development is Elena (Gadot) who is just the sexy sister of Winslet's character, Irina and the mother of Belmont's child. I feel like the film might've originally been longer and that the film got cut down because some characters are so barebones that they are just two dimensional characters and other characters that would've been a lot more interesting with some more development.

Kate Winslet in Triple 9.

The performances in the films are what you'd expect of a cast of this calibre, with several members standing out, Affleck mostly who i like more with each performance he gives, playing a tough cop that has entered a side of the police force he hasn't worked in before that is new to him, Ejiofor took on a role i hadn't seen him play before, playing one of the criminals, which he played very well, he is a very likeable guy usually but the film made him feel very intimidating, but also showed a soft side when shown with his son. Aaron Paul was also great in the film, but his character was very reminiscent of Jessie from Breaking Bad, which made his performance seem like a repeat of a performance he has already done. The only person i thought didn't fit the film and would've recast was Winslet, her Russian accent is very weak and she feel like a caricature than a real character and she looks nothing like her onscreen sister played by Gal Gadot.

Triple 9 was a good film that i'm glad i watched, but couldn't help thinking that it could've been much more with a bit of a longer running time to flesh out some of the secondary characters, when you have a cast this big and are depending on them all to develop the story, the characters need to be firing on all cylinders which unfortunately they don't.

7.2/10
What did you think of Triple 9?
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