Triple 9 refers to the police code for an officer down. This becomes an important detail as criminal Mike (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and his gang of corrupt or disgraced cops (Anthony Mackie, Clifton Collins Jr. and Aaron Paul) require a distraction that would keep police busy while they break into and steal from a Homeland Security facility. Mike and his crew are being blackmailed by the Russian mob into pulling off this impossible heist, and need to resort to extreme measures to pull it off, or face dire consequences. They decide that the only thing they can do is stage a 999, and their target is Chris Allen (Casey Affleck), a rookie cop who genuinely wants to make a difference.
Triple 9 has a wealth of moving parts, but none of those parts are interesting on their own. The film just doesn’t seem all that interested in its own characters, most of them just pawns in this chess game of a script. The film is strongly directed, and features a couple of bravura sequences filled with tension and peril as these pawns are driven into dangerous territory. But the larger picture feels pretty pointless, its particular brand of gritty nihilism coming off as empty posturing.
The story isn’t actually very complicated, though it feels like it. The film builds a complex world of relationships and arcane rituals that ends up obscuring the plot. Mike, as it turns out, has a son with the sister of the matriarch of the local Russian mob, which happens to be based in a kosher abattoir. Mike is pulling jobs for the mob so that he can keep seeing his son. One of his members of his crew is a little unstable, and is growing even more unstable following the death of his brother. Chris Allen is also the nephew of the detective investigating Mike’s crew, and just happens to be partnered with another member of said crew.
And then there’s also a Latino mob that gets drawn into this whole plot. It’s all very flavorful stuff, but there isn’t really much to it in the end. We don’t really get to know who these people are. They are defined thinly by one or two traits at most. This shortcoming really becomes a problem in the final acts, where all manner of things happen to the characters, but nothing is felt. The script ends in a pretty silly place, with nothing really learned or gained when all is said and done.
The film is best in places where people aren’t really talking at all. The direction comes alive in an early heist sequence and a later police raid. Director John Hillcoat puts focus on the methodical means with which these characters pull these things off. These are the rare moments where the characters feel more than just pawns, their professionalism becoming their defining characteristic. This all falls apart, though, the script just failing to give this grossly overqualified cast proper material with which to work.
Triple 9 tells too big a story to not be interested in who these characters are. There are so many parts to this story, and none of them are worth caring about. If it had even just one character that was defined beyond these empty genre terms, it might have even worked. But as it is, Triple 9 feels unpleasantly pointless. A couple of strong action sequences give it some measure of appeal, but it isn’t enough. It’s all sound and fury and grit signifying nothing, its characters trapped in a story that doesn’t really go anywhere.
My Rating:
