Triple Nine

Ruthless robbery

I’m continuing my review of previously un-watched heist movies with a 2016 entry: Triple Nine.

The one thing that really distinguishes Triple Nine is its amazing cast. Let me start a plot recap just by going down the list:

The Robbery Gang: Led by Chiwetel Ejiofor it includes Norman Reedus and Aaron Paul as Reedus’ fuck-up brother. Anthony Mackie and Clifton Collins Jr. round out the group as corrupt cops. I praised Collins HERE in a recent post. Ejiofor and Reedus are former military contractors who connected in Iraq with Russian-Israeli crime queen Kate Winslet, who is now setting up targets back home for them. Ejiofor has a child with her sister, Gal Gadot. The film opens with them robbing a bank’s safe deposit boxes on behalf of Winslet.

The Cops: Mackie teams up with a new partner, Casey Affleck, who is inexperienced but eager. They are supervised by Woody Harrelson, who is Affleck’s uncle. Collins works separately in the homicide department.

Winslet, who is using control over his son to blackmail Ejiofor, forces him to take on one more job, stealing a McGuffin from a Homeland Security secure facility. Whatever the McGuffin is, she needs it to get her husband released from a Russian gulag.

When planning the new caper, Ejiofor claims it is impossible because they would only have ten minutes to break in and get the item before the cops arrive. Collins offers the option of “Code 999,” which is police jargon for “officer down.” He suggests they kill a cop on the other side of town to direct police resources away long enough for them to pull off the heist. Everyone reluctantly agrees.

As Affleck pisses off Mackie, he is offered up as the sacrifice. The rest of the movie plays out the tension between Winslet – who is very hate-able as a ruthless and cruel villain – and Ejiofor, and the tension of a bullseye settling on Affleck. Everything climaxes in bloody and bleak fashion.

Triple Nine was directed by John Hillcoat, director of the ultra-bleak The Road and the very solid Lawless. He also directed The Proposition an Australian Western, which will be appearing here in the near future. He is currently adapting Cormac McCarthy’s supposedly unfilmable Blood Meridian. I read it and really hated it, but I would go see the film if Hillcoat manages to get it done.

It’s really not that much of a heist movie, since the two crimes are basically smash and grab robberies, so you don’t get elaborate planning or complex capers. But it maintains one essential element of a heist story: the mismatched and dysfunctional crew. Paul plays the familiar part of the unreliable screw-up who threatens to unravel everything and Collins provides the murderous psychopath who poses a deadly foil to leadership. Crosses and double-crosses abound; Ejiofor is the very watchable center who is tasked with trying to hold everything together through one awful setback after another.

Triple Nine is available streaming free on Tubi.