You had to grab every single dollar you could get your hands on, didn't you?

Triple Frontier

(2019)

(SPOILERS) Triple Frontier must have seemed like a no-brainer for Netflix, even by their standards of indiscriminately greenlighting projects whenever anyone who can’t get a job at a proper studio asks. It had, after all, been a hot property – nearly a decade ago now – with Kathryn Bigelow attached as director (she retains a producing credit) and subsequently JC Chandor, who has seen it through to completion. Netflix may not have attracted quite the same level of prospective stars – Johnny Depp, Tom Hanks, Will Smith, Tom Hardy and Channing Tatum were all involved at various points – but as ever, they haven’t stinted on the production. To what end, though? Well, Bigelow’s involvement is a reliable indicator; this is a movie about very male men doing very masculine things and suffering stoically for it.

I’ve liked what I’ve seen of Chandor’s previous work (Margin Call and A Most Violent Year), even if I’d be hard-pressed to reach an opinion on what sort of filmmaker he is (a competent one, I guess), and he’s co-credited on the screenplay with the project’s originator Mark Boal, but there’s something faintly underwhelming about every aspect of Triple Frontier, even granted the evident polish of the production. Boal, a former journalist, is best known for his studies of the military machine (In the Valley of Elah, The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty), ones which leave one with a sense that he’s overly respectful of the edifice while being sure to pluck plaudits for threading in nominal critiques (Elah is by some distance the best of the three, and I wonder how much of that wasn’t Paul Haggis’ input).

So it is here. There have been references to Triple Frontier operating along the lines of Three Kings meets The Treasure of the Sierre Madre, but there’s none of the former’s irreverence or the latter’s escalating insanity and paranoia to exert a hold on the viewer. Indeed, this is fairly standard-issue “mercenaries on a mission” fare, even extending to the opportunity to both do something noble (topple Colombian drug lord Lorea) and slightly less so (steal his loot into the bargain, but hey, the authorities there are hopelessly corrupt, so if you want to get the job done and there’s a little extra loot involved, to the tune of $250m, that’s all gravy).

In his first scene, Charlie Hunnam’s motivational speaker is giving troops a lecture about “the price of being a warrior”, evidence enough of how this will unfold tonally: dour veterans’ inability to adjust to civilian life, wracked with guilt over misdeeds done, and looking forward to getting back into the stylishly rendered, explosive action as a cathartic recourse (“We’re a dying breed. We were warriors”).

This rather hollow reading is further emphasised by the casting, a quintet of pampered Hollywood types donning their best hard-man war faces. Oscar Isaac, who worked previously with Chandor on A Most Violent Year, plays Pope, the instigator of the mission. He’s fine, but I do wonder where Isaac’s career is heading, in the same way that Andy Garcia started out with so much promise and then just became “fine”, and we forgot all the “next Pacino” talk. Pedro Pascal barely registers, while Garret Hedlund (as Hunnam’s brother) stands out only for looking more like a stoned surfer than a battle-weary vet (we’re also asked to believe he’s taken up a career as a mixed marital artist, so there are several serious stretches there).

Hunnam’s the conscience of the group, at least to an extent, as the quintet seem to assume positions according to the dictates of the scene, not having been fleshed out in sufficiently differentiated fashion at the outset. Beefy Batfleck has the most to chew on, in theory, as the real estate salesman unleashed in batty Bogart fashion when he gets a whiff of the loot, but sadly, one gets the impression this element was rather reined in somewhere along the way. He gets greedy, sure, but his perfectionist planner is quicky regretful for how his actions lead to their coming unstuck (“I killed those people” he professes, after a village massacre. “No you didn’t. We all did” comes back surfer martial artist dude, who later recklessly burns a load of money, KLF style, but with the excuse of wanting to keep warm. A donkey also goes over a cliff, though not as a result of mixed martial arts action, which is more affecting than any human casualties).

Indeed, there’s a sense of pulled punches throughout, that the material might have been on course for more all-out existential crisis territory, pitting former colleague against former colleague amidst the unforgiving elements. The sort of thing where Liam Neeson has to square off against a pack of hungry wolves after his fellow survivors are whittled down. Instead, it’s only Batfleck who comes a cropper, and in the last scene, helpful Hunnam even presents Isaac with the co-ordinates of the ravine they dropped their loot down (to be revisited when and if Netflix asks for Quadruple Frontier). The only discernible price paid is nobly giving up their shares of the meagre sum they escaped with to Batfleck’s family trust fund. Boam and Chandor make vague gestures towards the paraphernalia of modern warfare and irrevocably damaged psyches, but so glibly that most of the proceedings wouldn’t look out of place in a forty-year-old Christopher Walken movie made from a Frederick Forsyth novel.

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

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.

If I do nothing else, I will convince them that Herbert Stempel knows what won the goddam Academy Award for Best goddam Picture of 1955. That’s what I’m going to accomplish.

Quiz Show (1994) (SPOILERS) Quiz Show perfectly encapsulates a certain brand of Best Picture nominee: the staid, respectable, diligent historical episode, a morality tale in response to which the Academy can nod their heads approvingly and discerningly, feeding as it does their own vainglorious self-image about how times and attitudes have changed, in part thanks to their own virtuousness. Robert Redford’s film about the 1950s Twenty-One quiz show scandals is immaculately made, boasts a notable cast and is guided by a strong screenplay from Paul Attanasio (who, on television, had just created the seminal Homicide: Life on the Streets ), but it lacks that something extra that pushes it into truly memorable territory.

Other monks will meet their deaths here. And they too will have blackened fingers. And blackened tongues.

The Name of the Rose (1986) (SPOILERS) Umberto Eco wasn’t awfully impressed by Jean Jacques-Annaud’s adaptation of his novel – or “ palimpsest of Umberto Eco’s novel ” as the opening titles announce – to the extent that he nixed further movie versions of his work. Later, he amended that view, calling it “ a nice movie ”. He also, for balance, labelled The Name of the Rose his worst novel – “ I hate this book and I hope you hate it too ”. Essentially, he was begrudging its renown at the expense of his later “ superior ” novels. I didn’t hate the novel, although I do prefer the movie, probably because I saw it first and it was everything I wanted from a medieval Sherlock Holmes movie set in a monastery and devoted to forbidden books, knowledge and opinions.

Say hello to the Scream Extractor.

Monsters, Inc. (2001) (SPOILERS) I was never the greatest fan of Monsters, Inc. , even before charges began to be levelled regarding its “true” subtext. I didn’t much care for the characters, and I particularly didn’t like the way Pixar’s directors injected their own parenting/ childhood nostalgia into their plots. Something that just seems to go on with their fare ad infinitum. Which means the Pixars I preferred tended to be the Brad Bird ones. You know, the alleged objectivist. Now, though, we learn Pixar has always been about the adrenochrome, so there’s no going back…

No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

The Matrix (1999) (SPOILERS) Twenty years on, and the articles are on the defining nature of The Matrix are piling up, most of them touching on how its world has become a reality, or maybe always was one. At the time, its premise was engaging enough, but it was the sum total of the package that cast a spell – the bullet time, the fashions, the soundtrack, the comic book-as-live-action framing and styling – not to mention it being probably the first movie to embrace and reflect the burgeoning Internet ( Hackers doesn’t really count), and subsequently to really ride the crest of the DVD boom wave. And now? Now it’s still really, really good.

All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies.

Watership Down (1978) (SPOILERS) I only read Watership Down recently, despite having loved the film from the first, and I was immediately impressed with how faithful, albeit inevitably compacted, Martin Rosen’s adaptation is. It manages to translate the lyrical, mythic and metaphysical qualities of Richard Adams’ novel without succumbing to dumbing down or the urge to cater for a broader or younger audience. It may be true that parents are the ones who get most concerned over the more disturbing elements of the picture but, given the maturity of the content, it remains a surprise that, as with 2001: A Space Odyssey (which may on the face of it seem like an odd bedfellow), this doesn’t garner a PG certificate. As the makers noted, Watership Down is at least in part an Exodus story, but the biblical implications extend beyond Hazel merely leading his fluffle to the titular promised land. There is a prevalent spiritual dimension to this rabbit universe, one very much

Piece by piece, the camel enters the couscous.

The Forgiven (2021) (SPOILERS) By this point, the differences between filmmaker John Michael McDonagh and his younger brother, filmmaker and playwright Martin McDonagh, are fairly clearly established. Both wear badges of irreverence and provocation in their writing, and a willingness to tackle – or take pot-shots – at bigger issues, ones that may find them dangling their toes in hot water. But Martin receives the lion’s share of the critical attention, while John is generally recognised as the slightly lesser light. Sure, some might mistake Seven Psychopaths for a John movie, and Calvary for a Martin one, but there’s a more flagrant sense of attention seeking in John’s work, and concomitantly less substance. The Forgiven is clearly aiming more in the expressly substantial vein of John’s earlier Calvary, but it ultimately bears the same kind of issues in delivery.

In a few moments, you will have an experience that will seem completely real. It will be the result of your subconscious fears transformed into your conscious awareness.

Brainstorm (1983) (SPOILERS) Might Brainstorm have been the next big thing – a ground-breaking, game-changing cinematic spectacle that had as far reaching consequences as Star Wars (special effects) or Avatar (3D) – if only Douglas Trumbull had been allowed to persevere with his patented “Showscan” process (70mm film photographed and projected at 60 frames per second)? I suspect not; one only has to look at the not-so-far-removed experiment of Ang Lee with Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk , and how that went down like a bag of cold sick, to doubt that any innovation will necessarily catch on (although Trumbull at least had a narrative hinge on which to turn his “more real than real” imagery, whereas Lee’s pretty much boiled down to “because it was there”). Brainstorm ’s story is, though, like its title, possibly too cerebral, too much concerned with the consciousness and touting too little of the cloyingly affirmative that Bruce Rubin inevitably brings to his screenplays. T

Maybe the dingo ate your baby.

Seinfeld 2.9: The Stranded The Premise George and Elaine are stranded at a party in Long Island, with a disgruntled hostess.

He tasks me. He tasks me, and I shall have him.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) (SPOILERS) I don’t love Star Trek , but I do love Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan . That probably isn’t just me, but a common refrain of many a non-devotee of the series. Although, it used to apply to The Voyage Home (the funny one, with the whales, the Star Trek even the target audience for Three Men and a Baby could enjoy). Unfortunately, its high regard has also become the desperate, self-destructive, song-and-verse, be-all-and-end-all of the overlords of the franchise itself, in whichever iteration, it seems. This is understandable to an extent, as Khan is that rare movie sequel made to transcendent effect on almost every level, and one that stands the test of time every bit as well (better, even) as when it was first unveiled.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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