Out here, there is no good and there is no bad. To survive out here, you've got to out-monster the monster. Can you do that?

Triple 9

(2016)

(SPOILERS) John Hillcoat comes something of a cropper with this contribution to the heist genre, although not nearly as much as some of the reviews suggest. Triple 9 is a mess, but it’s a mess populated by a selection of strong (and some not so strong) performances and impressively energetic direction. This may be very much a Heat-wannabe, and suffers from the comparison, but ultimately I was more engaged by its ambition than put off by its shortcomings.

Probably the biggest of which is that it simply lacks sufficiently strong characterisation to justify its spinning wheels of dodgy cops, good cops and malicious mobsters. One wonders if great chunks of Triple 9 were left on the cutting room floor. Certainly, it had its release date pushed back six months. On the one side we have a couple of ex-SEALs (Chiwetel Ejiofor, Norman Reedus) and their co-conspirators Aaron Paul (as Reedus’ brother, an ex-cop) and bent coppers Anthony Mackie and Clifton Collins, Jr. On the other, there’s Casey Affleck as Mackie’s new partner and Woody Harrelson as Casey’s detective sergeant uncle, investigating the robbers’ case. Then there’s Kate Winslet supporting some impressively sculpted BIG hair as the wife of an imprisoned Russian-Jewish mafia boss and Gal Gadot as her sister (and Ejiofor’s wife).

So there’s a plethora of heads to keep a count of. Unfortunately, Hillcoat and writer Matt Cook (the upcoming Patriots Day) have difficulty keeping tabs on any of them. When it comes to the heists, or a particularly standout sequence where Mackie and Affleck enter an apartment building and give chase to a suspect, the picture becomes enervating and pulse-pounding. It’s in the whys and wherefores of what they do that Hillcoat and Cook let things slide.

While it isn’t as if Heat needed to go to great pains to underline the motivations of its characters – so it was certainly within Triple 9’s grasp – the thieves here remain less than slender of purpose. Ejiofor appears to be the ostensible leader and the character with the clearest discipline and code, yet his under-duress jobs for Winslet aren’t entirely convincing; he just wants to see his son, the stuff of crude melodrama, which doesn’t really explain his fellows’ motivation, given the high stakes involved and Kate’s rather reckless willingness to dispose of team members as a showing of meaning business (thus limit the chances of her getting her prize).

The Triple 9 (an office down) is suggested as a means to create confusion, so facilitating their second job (retrieving vital evidence from police custody); Affleck is to be the recipient, since Mackie objects to his encroaching on his territory (but then has second thoughts). If there’s little sympathy for the gang – Paul is even playing another of his hopeless junkie type parts, the perquisite unstable gang member – then Affleck’s performance appears to be entirely predicated on how much gum he can chew in any given scene.

I’m not Affleck’s biggest fan, partly because he has a habit of showing up in roles for which he’s entirely unsuited (Gone Baby Gone), and his alternately savvy and rather slow cop (depending on where he needs to be for third act developments) is definitely not one of his more believable roles; it’s almost as if, with every chew of that gum, he’s thinking “I can play a convincing cop. I can play a convincing cop”. At least Harrelson is a welcome antidote to this, wholeheartedly embracing his livewire old pro and thus distracting from how thin the proceedings are.

When Ejiofor eventually decides to blow Winslet up, you wonder why he didn’t do it in the first place (anyone could see she was never going to give him what he wanted, particularly after she starts demanding more for less), compounding a persistent feeling throughout of characters having insufficiently clear reasons for doing what they’re doing, not through intentional ambiguity but as a result of unclear plotting. Nevertheless, this is neither vastly better or inferior to some recent entries in the genre, such as The Town (overrated) and Takers (underrated). I tend to be an easy sell for this kind of crime flick, and Triple 9 kept me distracted but didn’t ultimately persuade me to invest in anyone in it, while the plot itself failed to take up the slack.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

I’m smarter than a beaver.

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This entire edifice you see around you, built on jute.

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Just because you are a character doesn't mean that you have character.

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I think it’s pretty clear whose side the Lord’s on, Barrington.

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Poetry in translation is like taking a shower with a raincoat on.

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Death to Bill and Ted!

Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991) (SPOILERS) The game of how few sequels are actually better than the original is so well worn, it was old when Scream 2 made a major meta thing out of it (and it wasn’t). Bill & Ted Go to Hell , as Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey was originally called, is one such, not that Excellent Adventure is anything to be sneezed at, but this one’s more confident, even more playful, more assured and more smartly stupid. And in Peter Hewitt it has a director with a much more overt and fittingly cartoonish style than the amiably pedestrian Stephen Herrick. Evil Bill : First, we totally kill Bill and Ted. Evil Ted : Then we take over their lives. My recollection of the picture’s general consensus was that it surpassed the sleeper hit original, but Rotten Tomatoes’ review aggregator suggests a less universal response. And, while it didn’t rock any oceans at the box office, Bogus Journey and Point Break did quite nicely for Keanu Reev

I’m the famous comedian, Arnold Braunschweiger.

Last Action Hero (1993) (SPOILERS) Make no mistake, Last Action Hero is a mess. But even as a mess, it might be more interesting than any other movie Arnie made during that decade, perhaps even in his entire career. Hellzapoppin’ (after the 1941 picture, itself based on a Broadway revue) has virtually become an adjective to describe films that comment upon their own artifice, break the fourth wall, and generally disrespect the convention of suspending disbelief in the fictions we see parading across the screen. It was fairly audacious, some would say foolish, of Arnie to attempt something of that nature at this point in his career, which was at its peak, rather than playing it safe. That he stumbled profoundly, emphatically so since he went up against the behemoth that is Jurassic Park (slotted in after the fact to open first), should not blind one to the considerable merits of his ultimate, and final, really, attempt to experiment with the limits of his screen persona.

If you ride like lightning, you're going to crash like thunder.

The Place Beyond the Pines (2012) (SPOILERS) There’s something daringly perverse about the attempt to weave a serious-minded, generation-spanning saga from the hare-brained premise of The Place Beyond the Pines . When he learns he is a daddy, a fairground stunt biker turns bank robber in order to provide for his family. It’s the kind of “only-in-Hollywood” fantasy premise you might expect from a system that unleashed Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man and Point Break on the world. But this is an indie-minded movie from the director of the acclaimed Blue Valentine ; it demands respect and earnest appraisal. Unfortunately it never recovers from the abject silliness of the set-up. The picture is littered with piecemeal characters and scenarios. There’s a hope that maybe the big themes will even out the rocky terrain but in the end it’s because of this overreaching ambition that the film ends up so undernourished. The inspiration for the movie

Everyone creates the thing they dread.

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) (SPOILERS) Avengers: Age of Ultron ’s problem isn’t one of lack. It benefits from a solid central plot. It features a host of standout scenes and set pieces. It hands (most of) its characters strong defining moments. It doesn’t even suffer now the “wow” factor of seeing the team together for the first time has subsided. Its problem is that it’s too encumbered. Maybe its asking to much of a director to effectively martial the many different elements required by an ensemble superhero movie such as this, yet Joss Whedon’s predecessor feels positively lean in comparison. Part of this is simply down to the demands of the vaster Marvel franchise machine. Seeds are laid for Captain America: Civil War , Infinity Wars I & II , Black Panther and Thor: Ragnarok . It feels like several spinning plates too many. Such activity occasionally became over-intrusive on previous occasions ( Iron Man II ), but there are points in Age of Ultron whe

Your Mickey Mouse is one big stupid dope!

Enemy Mine (1985) (SPOILERS) The essential dynamic of Enemy Mine – sworn enemies overcome their differences to become firm friends – was a well-ploughed one when it was made, such that it led to TV Tropes assuming, since edited, that it took its title from an existing phrase (Barry Longyear, author of the 1979 novella, made it up, inspired by the 1961 David Niven film The Best of Enemies ). The Film Yearbook Volume 5 opined that that Wolfgang Petersen’s picture “ lacks the gritty sauciness of Hell in the Pacific”; John Boorman’s WWII film stranded Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune on a desert island and had them first duking it out before becoming reluctant bedfellows. Perhaps germanely, both movies were box office flops.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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