Cinematic Releases: Triple 9 - Movie Review

Word on the street says you won't like this review. 

Ladies and gentlemen,
we give you Wonder Woman!

In perhaps the biggest marketing blunder of 2016, Triple 9 is not the action filled heist movie you expected.

Instead, it's the antithesis of the studio's push to make us believe this would be the second coming of the shoot 'em up bank robbery flick. Yes, there's a lot of gun fire and a lot of murky twists and turns but this is just about most epically failed delivery of a great cast in the last decade. With Casey Affleck as our central point of the story, it's not too surprising as he's an extremely talented actor that seems to be a ticking time bomb of box office blunders. Everything he stars in sinks faster than you can say The Finest Hours. His acting isn't bad here. It's the movie that tragically misguides his talents. 

Trying to cash in on the good elements of Heat, The Departed, Training Day, The Town, and every other movie about dirty crooks, greasy cops,  and a scummy criminal underbelly, Triple 9 literally deteriorates at the seams. The story is clunky beyond repair. The couple big action sequences are hampered by a lack of good cinematography. And everything else just falls by the wayside as audiences have nothing invested in these plebeian characters that are truncated by a script that gives them no human elements whatsoever. Triple 9 is a dull edged cookie cutter crime drama with nothing to offer. And that cool looking poster, well that's the best part of the movie. 

Well, my brother is Batman by the way.
Wanna hook up?

With a cast that features Affleck, Kate Winslet, Anthony Mackie, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Woody Harrelson, Aaron Paul, Norman Reedus, Clifton Collins Jr., Gal Gadot, and Teresa Palmer, it's a verifiable feat to make a movie this absurdly bad. With a crusty and broodish tone, the movie starts out strong, kicking in with action right away. Throughout the first act, everything falls away, turning this into something nearly as dull as Ridley Scott's The Counselor. To best describe Triple 9, I'd say this was a script gone wrong that could have used a couple more months development time and/or some major cuts in the final edit of the picture. It's overlong, superbly drab, and just a buck shot short of hitting second run theaters within the next two weeks. 

How on earth this movie got released in this format with an ad campaign that made it seem like we'd be getting something stellar is truly beyond me. From the first trailer, we were sold on the visual elements they gave us. Once again, we trusted a studio with our time and our ticket money. Triple 9 does absolutely nothing to further the criminal motion picture genre. This is nothing but a tribute to a bunch of way better movies with directors that knew how to capture grit and criminality rooted in the dark side of man's greed and material desires. John Hillcoat's Triple 9 is a major flub. Skip this one. 


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Score


-CG