Triple 9

Like a gor­geous, aero­dy­nam­ic sports car that’s been sad­dled with a 50cc go-kart engine, John Hillcoat’s Triple 9 offers – as the trade film crit­ics like to say – a bof­fo tech pack­age, but lit­tle more than flash. Casey Affleck is our moral com­pass through the mean streets of Atlanta, Geor­gia, where gang war­fare in the projects is the small­est of small fry com­pared to some of the dodgy deeds being under­tak­en by the city’s finest.

Hill­coat hits us between the solar plexus with an open­ing scene that plunges the view­er direct­ly into a world of auto­mat­ic weapons, hock­ey masks and minia­ture explo­sives. Ex black-ops troop­er Ter­rell (Chi­we­tel Ejio­for) heads up a crew of bent cop­pers (Antho­ny Mack­ie, Clifton Collins Jr) and das­tard­ly crims (Aaron Paul, Nor­man Reedus) on a high­ly spe­cif­ic bank heist where the mod­est haul is the con­tents of a sin­gle lock­er in the vault. On this occa­sion, their on-the-job greed doesn’t quite lead them to ruin, but it does mean that Russ­ian mafia moll Iri­na (Kate Winslet) has got one last task for them before she hands over the filthy lucre that’s been promised.

Casey Affleck’s stocky straight-shoot­er Chris becomes embroiled in this world when he becomes the tar­get of a ​“triple 9” – police code for offi­cer down. His buck-toothed, coke-hoover­ing guardian angel is played by Woody Har­rel­son, an old­er detec­tive whose brash sar­to­r­i­al trade­mark is a stars-and-stripes neck-tie. The cogs all begin to turn and hate­ful char­ac­ters place one anoth­er into awk­ward, and poten­tial­ly dead­ly, posi­tions. All the while, those law­men still on the side of jus­tice slow­ly close the net on their prey.

As the film glides into its sec­ond half, pure plot mechan­ics take over and we’re left with a bunch of scream­ing meat pup­pets shoot­ing guns at one anoth­er. Hill­coat takes such pains to try and make his tricksy plot work, that he for­gets to make the movie about any­thing, and also to give the char­ac­ters a sense of depth or human­i­ty. We’re con­stant­ly being told what’s at stake, but nev­er made to feel that these peo­ple deserve the fruits of their endeavours.

Ejio­for only appears to be involved to ensure the safe­ty of his child, who Iri­na has tak­en cap­tive, though it’s nev­er made clear why you’d want this mur­der­ous mani­ac to get what he wants. It’s hard­ly a chore to sit through, but you do feel that Hill­coat was striv­ing for some­thing grander than he actu­al­ly end­ed up with.