26th Feb2016

Triple 9 (Film)

by timbaros

triple9_1200x513Triple 9 is the police officer code for the death of a policeman. It’s also the name of a new film about corruption in the police department.

Taking place in Atlanta, and with an all-star cast, ‘Triple 9’ focuses on several characters, but it’s Chris Allen’s (Casey Affleck) story. He’s been moved from a zone 2 position (crossing guard) to that of a police detective, serving under his uncle Sergeant Detective Jeffrey Allen (Woody Harrelson). But amongst the rest of Allen’s squad are police officers who don’t exactly follow the rules, some of them in fact break them. And the ones that break them are being blackmailed by the Russian Mafia, led by Irina Vlaslov (Kate Winslet looking extremely unrecognizable). Vlaslov has several of the police officers in the palm of her hand and in her pocket, including Michael Belmont (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Marcus Atwood (Anthony Mackie). She’s also kidnapped Atwood’s young son born to him by his Russian ex-wife to prove to him that he better finish one last job for her. In an explosive start to the film, Belmont, along with Atwood and Gabe Welch (Aaron Paul) and others pull off a daring heist in an Atlanta downtown bank. It’s a heist that goes smoothly until one of the bags full of money explodes with colored powder, exposing the men on a highway where they have to hijack another car to get away. Meanwhile, local Mexican gangs aren’t too pleased to see the police in their neighborhoods, and the gangs will do whatever it takes to get the cops off their streets. Led by Pinto (Luis Da Silva), his gang deals drugs and kills cops full time. But Detective Allen, who has a wife and young baby at home, doesn’t know that he’s being set up in order for the corrupt cops to pull off the final heist in the Department of Homeland Security’s vault under Vlaslov’s orders. It’s a heist where Allen realizes police corruption is too close to home.

Tripple 9 is not for the faint at heart. It’s full of severed heads, shootouts, brutal arrests and lots and lots of violence. We see the story through Aflleck’s eyes – a young naive cop caught up in a world he knows nothing about. The star-studded cast all work hard to make Matt Cook’s script as real as possible. Most memorable is Winslet who plays the Russian boss – very cold and calculating who won’t even think twice about killing one of her own. Her Russian accent is very good but starts lilting into English near the end of the film. Director John Hillcoat (who gave us the masterpiece ’The Road) keeps the action coming at us right and left throughout the film, but it’s the predictable ending that doesn’t quite make this film as good as it should’ve been.

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30th Jan2014

Out of the Furnace – Film

by timbaros

images-86Out of the Furnace stars one of the hottest actors in the business today – Christian Bale. It is a film produced by Leonardo DiCaprio and Ridley Scott, among others, and it also stars Oscar-winning actors Forest Whitaker and Willem Dafoe, and Oscar-nominated actors Woody Harrelson, Cassey Affleckand Sam Shepard, unfortunately, the film just does not work.

Bale is Russell Baze (not a very good name for a main character), he works in the local steel mill (in a dark, polluted town somewhere in Pennsylvania). His father is near death, watched over by Russell’s younger brother Rodney Baze Jr. (Affleck), back home and physically and mentally scared from serving time in the military. One evening after visiting his father and heading back home to his wife Lena (Zoe Saldana), he crashes into a car and kills its two occupants. He is sent to prison (which happens too suddenly, there is no trial – so the movie takes us directly from the car crash to Russell being in prison). It is not clear how long he is in prison for, but he is there long enough to miss his father’s funeral. Also, his wife has left him for the local police chief (Whitaker – who doesn’t have much to do in this film).
Having no choice but to move back into his father’s house, he learns that his brother is involved in illegal fighting and also owes local man John Petty (Dafoe) a lot of money. Russell advises his brother to work in the mill, to stay clean, to make their dead father proud. But Rodney has a lot of anger, hostility, and aggression, so it appears that he needs to fight. He also needs to repay Petty, and while Russell tries to help out paying some money towards the loan, Rodney goes ahead with one final fight. Unbeknownst to Rodney, Petty also owes money to Harlan DeGroat (Harrelson), a local drug dealer who, with his thugs and addicts, have some kind of control of the local area. For reasons not very clear, Petty tells Rodney to throw the fight, which he does, and it has bad implications for both men. It is up to Russell to seek revenge and get even, leading to a very predictable showdown with DeGroat.
With so much talent on board, you would think that Out of the Furnace would and could be a contender for awards, but unfortunately it is quite the opposite. The script is too predictable, there seems to be chunks of scenes that are missing, the main characters are given very strange names (Harlan DeGroat? Russell Baze?) and the final scene, the showdown, is not dramatic at all. It could’ve been a better film because in its development stage it had DiCaprio attached to star and Scott attached to direct. Director and writer Scott Cooper directed Jeff Bridges to his Oscar-winning performance in 2009’s Crazy Heart, however, for Out of the Furnace, it seems like he called in sick a few times during shooting. And his script, written with Brad Ingelsby, is frustrating and not comprehensive. While the cinematography and landscape of rural Pennsylvania is in line with the plot of the film (dark, moody), and the performances are what you would expect from the caliber of actors involved, overall Out of the Furnace is literally dead on arrival.