The new UK trailer for John Hillcoat’s long-gestating follow-up to his 2012 hooch bootlegging runaround, Lawless, has dropped. It looks to be a high-styled rendering of the classic heist gone south yarn, the (revealed) twist being that the instigators of a violent bank robbery which results in various civilian deaths are, in fact, bent coppers played by Casey Affleck, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Anthony Mackie.
On their case is Woody Harrelson’s aviator-shaded detective, and what’s the betting that the closer he gets to collaring these insider crooks with his tenacious, possible not by-the-book methods, the crooks themselves begin to crack under the vast pressure of their potential capture?
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Whatever, this trailer certainly alerts us to the importance of explosive dye-packs used to trace stolen loot. Elsewhere, Kate Winslet is making a play to be the Catherine Deneuve / “grande dame”, with her low-cut couture attire and a giant, tidal-wave blond back-sweep of hair. And, of course, a Russian accent. Hopefully she’ll be more menacing than the slick, soulless antagonist she plays in the Insurgent films.
One doesn’t like to speculate too broadly about movies on the basis of a trailer, but it’s fair to say that this is a far cry from the Becketian future-shock of Hillcoat’s stunning, radical debut feature, Ghosts… of the Civil Dead, in which Nick Cave plays the sweariest convict in the history of the prison system. Maybe he’ll head back for a visit some day?
Triple 9 opens in UK cinemas on 19 February.
