Somebody's been watching Heat. Apparently, they've also been watching The Wire, but I've never seen that, so I can't comment, which usually garners a similar reaction to saying you haven't watched Breaking Bad. I haven't watched that either.
So, can someone explain to me what people see in Aaron Paul? Between this, Need For Speed and anything else I've seen him in, it's safe to say I just don't get it.
The Partially Educated Review
Because sometimes life just isn't quite miserable enough
In 50 Words or Less: It's not the unrelentingly bleak tone of the film that's the problem. It's that it's got that tone with absolutely no one to get behind. A cast this noteworthy should give us performances that are more than satisfactory. They don't. Ultimately, the film's own influences show themselves as preferable viewing.
In Detail: John Hillcoat isn't a household name. I don't think he's ever going to be one either because his films are all so unrelentingly bleak. When your most cheerful output to date has been the film Lawless, you're not exactly gunning for the feels. Triple 9 is no exception to this rule. The moment Kate Winslet presents a bag of severed fingers to the people from whom the fingers were taken, it becomes very apparent that she's not occupying the same territory as The Holiday. It doesn't get any nicer from there though, moving it's characters further into a life so dark that death may be their only way to a happy ending.
The film's plot revolves around crooked cops trying to stage a (wait for it) Triple 9; an event which results in the calling of all available police officers to the scene. This in turn will then take attention away from an upcoming robbery that they are forced into by Winslet's Russian gangster. Instead of the mechanics of the robbery itself, this is more bothered with the characters own internal conflicts, though most of the time they just need someone to tell them one thing.
Ordinarily, when a film's like that, it falls flat under the weight of it's own misery. Hillcoat has, however, made persistent depression work for his audience in the past, with The Proposition and (particularly) The Road showing us how you can still engage an audience despite an uncompromising nature. Much like Lawless though, he seems to have forgotten the essential mechanic in achieving that; there has to be someone to root for. For the most part, Triple 9's characters are either scumbags or conflicted scumbags, meaning that every time one of them holds a gun to the other, you couldn't care less if a small explosive device wiped the both of them out. As this sort of conflict makes a frequent appearance, that lack of someone to get behind is a real problem.
There's a couple of exceptions to the scumbag rule, but Casey Affleck's noble detective is duller than a greyscale painting of an empty goldfish bowl and Woody Harrelson is uncommonly dreadful as the cop with a drink problem. There are some solid enough performances here and there, but none of them are really noteworthy enough to warrant separating from the crowd. Perhaps Winslet would have been a saving grace, as her undeniable presence is there to be seen, but her performance keeps being off-railed by an accent that seems like she's taken John Malkovich in Rounders as an inspiration.
Triple 9 is a thriller by appearance only, distinctly lacking in the pluralized first syllable of that word. It's forgettability is apparent by the fact every time an offscreen character is referred to, you need some time to remind yourself which one that is. In the weeks to come, this will leave cinemas and make a fairly quiet home viewing release, only to become a footnote in the careers of everyone involved. Taking prior form into account, Hillcoat is still a director whose films are worth anticipating, but this, combined with Lawless, could suggest a downward slide has begun. Though hopefully not.
FOUR out of 10
