‘Triple 9’
› Rating: R by the Motion Picture Association of America for “strong violence and language throughout, drug use and some nudity” › Running time: 115 minutes
“Triple 9” has everything going for it, and that’s it biggest handicap.
This tale of gangsters and crooked cops in Atlanta has got a murderer’s row of acting talent – Casey Affleck, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kate Winslet, and Woody Harrelson among them – an alluringly dark premise, and bombastic bursts of greatness. But ultimately, director John Hillcoat (“The Proposition,” ”The Road”) fails to meld the storytelling with the film’s ambitious scope, the way Michael Mann so proficiently did 21 years ago with his modern classic “Heat.”
“Triple 9” starts out auspiciously enough, with a pulsating and vividly executed bank robbery that crackles with tension and immediacy as the criminals execute the heist and begin their escape through the busy streets of the gritty city. It’s the kind of drawn out sequence that can be enough to propel an entire film as you wait for another set piece to top it. There is one other masterfully choreographed raid about midway through, but by then you’re almost too caught up in the confusing who, what, where and why to indulge in the excitement.
Hillcoat, working from screenwriter Matt Cook’s Black List script, trusts the audience to weave together the narratives of its eight main characters by themselves without the help of exposition – a welcome challenge, but a frustrating one as well. There are just so many characters, subplots and motivations to keep track of that it feels more like an extended pilot in the vein of “The Wire” or even “True Detective” than a contained movie.