Triple 9

A bank robbery in broad daylight goes badly. Unhappy with the results, ruthless gangster Irina Vlaslov tells the crew responsible—a team of crooked cops—that if they want to make amends, then they need to pull off another job for her. One of those bad apples on this crew is a man named Marcus Belmont, and he suddenly finds himself saddled with a new straight-arrow partner, Chris Allen. Belmont and his fellow dirty cops begin to lay the groundwork for their heist, intending to use Allen as a critical piece, all while trying to avoid discovery by Allen, who is an officer with his own secret agenda.

Triple 9 is one of those movies.

You stumble across it on one of the streamers, and see that it stars a slew of recognizable names like Casey Affleck, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Anthony Mackie, Aaron Paul, Woody Harrelson, Kate Winslet, Gal Gadot, Norman Reedus, and Michael Kenneth Williams. It even has a few “hey, it’s that guy” actors like Clifton Collins Jr. to boot. So naturally, with a powerhouse cast like this, your first question is: “Wait, what? This is from 2016? How have I never heard of this film before?” The risk of then watching films like this is that you might discover that the answer to your question is: “because it sucks.”

Well, I stumbled across Triple 9 on a streamer, saw the impressive cast, wondered how it is that I had never heard of this film, and then watched it, and it turns out... Triple 9 doesn’t suck. It’s actually just... “fine.” It’s not good by any means. But it’s not all that bad either, not really. It’s fine, just fine.

It’s aggressively "fine."

Triple 9 is your basic off-the-rack cops and robbers movie, with just about every cliche you’d expect, like dye packs exploding in stolen money bags, all-powerful and all-gaudy Russian mafia, wild-eyed gangbangers, foot chases through public housing, and more than a few ex-soldiers with no where to turn with their skills except crime. Mostly, it’s a film that tries really hard to say something profound and shocking about ”big city” corruption, the abuse of power, and dirty cops, or as Twain famously said: “but I repeat myself…”

Normally, I’m all about heist stories where ex-soldiers go for their big payday, because they’re the actual heroes in the story, right? Especially when their target is the government’s money, or a corporation’s money, right? This country certainly doesn’t give a shit about them anymore, so why shouldn’t they take what’s they're owed? Plus, I’m tired of the bullshit false morality that usually wraps these stories too, as if showing people who were fed lies, tossed into a meat grinder, and then abandoned by their country, deciding to take a big risk and reach for a golden ring, only to miss, and are then punished by the law–or even more often, killed by the law–is some kind of universal lesson for us all. Like they're waggling their finger at us: "Stay in line, good citizens, for crime does not pay," So like I said, normally, I’m always rooting for the thieves in these things, especially when they’re ex-soldiers, but here, in Triple 9, the thieves are all bad guys, they're all dirty cops, so… fuck them. Catch some lead, boys.

The story starts out with a daring daylight bank robbery that was masterminded by an ex-soldier (and possibly dirty cop, I forget), Michael Atwood (Chiwetel Ejiofor). Michael’s crew is made up of his buddies, dirty cop #1, Marcus Belmont (Anthony Mackie), dirty cop #2, Jorge Rodriguez (Clifton Collins Jr.), getaway driver, dirty cop #3, and former soldier #2, Russel Welch (Norman Reedus), and also, Russel’s junkie brother and dirty cop #4, Gabe, (Aaron Paul), a character who might as well being wearing a sandwich board with “Future Liability” written across it. So, yeah, surprise, surprise, because of Gabe, shit goes bad and they have to cut and run.

Even worse for the crew, it turns out they weren’t there just for the money, they were actually there to steal a specific safety deposit box for the Russian mob boss, Irina Vlaslov (Kate Winslet), and since they fucked it up, she is now refusing to pay them until they perform another job, and it’s a really tough job, a practically impossible job, that I think is at the Federal Reserve or something.

Also, Irina has control over Michael, because Michael has a son with Irina’s sister Elena (Gal Gadot), and while she’s not quite holding them hostage, she’s also not allowing Michael to see his kid.

So, this film is called Triple 9, because apparently 999 is the code for “officer down,” and in the planning of the second heist, Michael decides that the best way to distract the cops from their heist is to kill a cop at the same time, because when a 999 goes out over the radio, all the cops and first responders answer. And as luck would have it, Marcus has new partner named Chris Allen (Casey Affleck). Chris is a by-the-book kind of guy, so the bad guys decide that Chris will be the one they kill. Unfortunately for the crew, Chris’s uncle (Woody Harrelson) is the head of the investigation hunting the bank robbers, so maybe… just maybe… Chris is actually an undercover cop, and is keeping an eye on the whole crew at the same time. Also, this cop-murdering plan is making the already unstable Gabe even more unstable, as he used to be a cop himself, and now he's starting to feel guilty. Plus, he's a junkie, so it's just a matter of time until he wrecks shit.

After that, everything goes about as you’d expect.

This is a film that says nothing, but clearly thinks that it does. There’s a couple of good set pieces, but for the most part, this is inoffensive but completely mediocre garbage, the cinematic equivalent of a cheap knock-off of a Tom Clancy novel, the kind that Dad’s used to buy in airport bookstores. Filled to the brim with hollow macho nihilism, faux grit, frankly performative drug and alcohol use, too many characters, and too many storylines, all of which does nothing in the end but waste the incredible amount of talent somehow present for this incredibly unimpressive script, and is then capped off with an ending that feels too rushed, tacked on, and out of left field all at once, it’s just nothing but Cliched Dude Tropes top to bottom, and only occasionally decently executed at best. It looks good at times, but yeah... it's like a parody of a "gritty" cops and robbers movie.

If I'm being honest, this is the type of film that really should kill a director’s career, or at least put them in Movie Jail for a good long time. When you have all the tools you could have possibly needed to make a great film, and then some (except a good script, to be fair), and you somehow still whiff as hard as this…? Done. Time to go into selling insurance or something, because it looks like making movies is just not for you, my friend.

This is one to pass on.