Atti­cus Ross reveals details of John Hillcoat’s Triple 9

Fol­low­ing his bruis­ing 2012 west­ern, Law­less, Aus­tralian direc­tor John Hill­coat will return next year with his sixth fea­ture, Triple 9. Based on a Black List screen­play by Matt Cook, the film will fol­low a gang of crooked police offi­cers as they attempt to pull off a heist on behalf on the Russ­ian mafia. The title refers to the police radio code for ​“offi­cer down”, which in this instance con­cerns a strick­en Casey Affleck.

Hillcoat’s affec­tion for dead­ly, sto­ic anti-heroes looks set to play a major part in Triple 9, which is one of our most antic­i­pat­ed releas­es of 2016. The film’s some­what tumul­tuous pro­duc­tion, with cast­ing changes being made at var­i­ous stages, means it will land six months lat­er than orig­i­nal­ly planned. We can’t help but won­der what the likes of Christoph Waltz and Cate Blanchett might have achieved with Hill­coat – although Woody Har­rel­son, Kate Winslet and Chi­we­tel Ejio­for are hard­ly poor replace­ments. To find out more about the project, we spoke to com­pos­er Atti­cus Ross, for whom Triple 9 marks his lat­est col­lab­o­ra­tion with Hillcoat.

“John was very involved with the musi­cal com­po­si­tion,” says Ross, ​“he had a par­tic­u­lar vision for the music on this movie which was very raw sound­ing elec­tron­ics; with bizarrely a sax­o­phone in there. With this film, it was dif­fi­cult because we were try­ing to get the sto­ry right and one would write the music, but then the scenes would change around and it all becomes redun­dant. So it was quite a bit of work.”

On the sub­ject of why Hill­coat is the right guy to tack­le a project like Triple 9, Ross declares, ​“Well, it’s main­ly because he’s insane. I think John’s thing is that he brings a sense of intel­lec­tu­al­i­ty to the table that is his, and he’s also versed in film in a way that rarely hap­pens. He’ll send me DVDs and ref­er­ences which I’ve nev­er even fuck­ing heard of, and I con­sid­er myself well versed!”

Pri­mar­i­ly filmed in and around Atlanta, Triple 9 will extend Hillcoat’s rela­tion­ship with the city, the direc­tor hav­ing also shot Law­less there back in 2011. So what can audi­ences expect from Hill­coat on this present day-set ensem­ble crime thriller? ​“Super­fi­cial­ly, it’s a sto­ry about a mix­ture of good and bad police, with a kind of mob thing going on. But what it’s real­ly about – like all of John’s films – is a jour­ney into the depths of the human con­di­tion and how low yet how high we can go as human beings. When John goes dark and vio­lent, it’s bru­tal and bloody. That’s what gives you that rush of truth.”

“He has a sig­na­ture visu­al style that car­ries,” Ross con­tin­ues. ​“When you meet him he seems like this hap­py, nice per­son but in his films there’s this intense dark­ness. John brings a weight­i­ness to the sub­ject that comes from his own expe­ri­ence and you can tell when someone’s fak­ing it, you can tell if they haven’t real­ly been to those places because it doesn’t read emo­tion­al­ly that way. Despite his hap­py demeanour on the out­side, he has been to those places, so he under­stands the feel­ings he’s try­ing to get across.

“John is talk­ing about a lot of things here: race; cul­ture; police; Amer­i­ca today. There’s a French Con­nec­tion feel to it, that’s the kind of film we were look­ing back to. Also stuff like Bul­litt; the car chas­es, where you feel the fuck­ing engine of the car and things explod­ing every­where but it doesn’t seem like a sound effect. That’s the lev­el of real­ism John was try­ing to achieve. Triple 9 is a vio­lent film and if you’re look­ing for a feel-good movie, this might not be the one to go to.”

Triple 9 is released Spring 2016.