Thus, it should come as no surprise that his latest, Triple 9, revels in corruption, brutality, and bloodshed as it spins a deeply convoluted story (courtesy of first-time scribe Matt Cook) about the intersection of dirty and even more dirtier cops and the Russian mafia on the mean, racially charged streets of Atlanta. The film opens with a daring mid-day bank heist, the purpose of which is to steal a particular safety deposit box. It is then revealed (mild spoiler alert!) that several of the robbers are police officers: Marcus Belont (Anthony Mackie) and Franco Rodriguez (Clifton Collins Jr.), while another, Gabe Welch (Aaron Paul), is a strung-out former cop. The group’s leader, Michael Atwood (Chiwetel Ejiofor), is a professional criminal with a solid head on his shoulders, although he and his group have somehow become indebted to the Russian mob, which is run by Irina Vlaslov (Kate Winslet, virtually unrecognizable), who is standing in for her imprisoned husband (the mother of Michael’s young son is Irina’s sister, so that may have something to do with it). For all intents and purposes, Irina is the film’s true grotesque (Hillcoat’s films always have at least one), and her moral depravity is embodied in her high-sprayed bouffant, wicked nails, and withering stare. She wears a car ornament-sized Star of David like a piece of bling, thus signifying both her lack of taste and debasement of cultural and religious significance.

Because Atwood and his gang are indebted to Irina, they must pull off one last heist to settle the score, which is so complicated that it requires distracting the entire police force with a so-called “Triple 9,” the police code for the killing of a cop. So, they must chose a victim, and who better than Chris Allen (Casey Affleck), Marcus’s new partner. Chris is an innocent to the extent that he is interested in actually upholding the law and has no idea that he’s been partnered with a criminal posing with a badge, but he is also a special ops veteran, which means that he is no easy target. He is also the nephew of Jeffrey Allen (Woody Harrelson), a police detective who is investigating the gang’s crimes (he is also an alcoholic and a serious drug addict, and Harrelson plays him with a set of false teeth that are only slightly less attention-grabbing than his utter sense of cynicism).

Thus, the stage is set for a showdown between the good, the bad, and the ugly, and while Hillcoat stages a couple of stand-out setpieces, the film as a whole is too dark, too muddled, and too mired in its despondent worldview to connect as anything other than simplistically bleak. If we had a better sense of what was at stake, the characters and their various plights might have taken on more meaning, but Cook’s screenplay is so vague in its plot developments that it’s hard to determine why anyone is doing anything. One of the film’s most memorable sequences finds Chris and Marcus leading a raid on a government housing complex to find a notorious Mexican drug dealer. Hillcoat squeezes out every drop of suspense while also dramatizing the scathing tensions between the have-nots and the police who are ostensibly protecting them, but are viewed primarily as a tool of oppression. There are various social statements about race and economics cutting their way through Triple 9’s surface thrills, but nothing really connects except the idea that the world is filled with a lot of very bad people, some of whom wear badges and some of whom don’t. There is not a fine line between cop and criminal here, but rather no line at all, and some of the film’s most vicious characters don’t just hide behind their status as authority figures, but flagrantly degrade it. Outside of Chris, who Affleck invests with a genuine sense of humanity and character, it doesn’t much matter who gets a bullet and who doesn’t because they’re all doomed anyway.

Copyright ©2016 James Kendrick

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