TRIPLE 9 (John Hillcoat). 120 minutes. Opens Friday (February 26). See listing. Rating: NN
Australian director John Hillcoat made his name with grim character studies like The Proposition and The Road. And then he went sideways with the inert period thriller Lawless, leaving gifted actors Tom Hardy, Jason Clarke, Mia Wasikowska and Jessica Chastain high and dry.
Triple 9 feels like a course correction back into the mainstream. It’s an amped-up, high-testosterone throwdown about an Atlanta heist crew – two of whom are cops – who decide that the only way to pull off an impossible job is to distract the entire police force by engineering an officer-down situation elsewhere in the city.
Like Lawless, it’s an all-star crime picture told with an emphasis on brutal violence and swagger – and like Lawless, it’s technically accomplished but emotionally hollow, giving a top-flight cast that includes Chiwetel Ejiofor, Casey Affleck, Anthony Mackie, Clifton Collins Jr., Aaron Paul and Woody Harrelson little to do besides run around waving artillery and shouting at each other. (Harrelson manages to spin his role to life.)
But at least they have characters to play. Hillcoat’s women are, once again, left largely on the sidelines. Only Kate Winslet makes an impression as the matriarch of a Russian Jewish crime family – and that’s because she’s badly miscast.
