Film Review: Triple Frontier

"You've Been Shot Five Times For Your Country And You Can't Even Afford A New Truck..."

Hot off the heels of winning the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in the form of the excellent and beautiful Roma, Netflix returns to the land of small screen blockbusters with Triple Frontier, a dramatic blend of action and heist movie with a top notch, a-list cast and helmed by A Most Violent Year and Margin Call director, J. C. Chandor. Featuring a screenplay from both Chandor and Mark Boal, the acclaimed writer behind The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, Triple Frontier sees Oscar Isaac (The Last Jedi) as Santiago Garcia, a private military advisor who after being tipped off about the location of a paranoid, cash-rich drug lord, forms a band of merry mercenaries and ventures into the jungle in order to steal what he believes is rightfully his after years of service to war without any just reward. With Chandor previously showcasing his realist cinematic sensibility with A Most Violent Year, Triple Frontier continues the director's hard-edged approach to filmmaking with a release which attempts to be much more than just a sub-standard testosterone-fuelled action flick, and whilst there is an underlying interesting notion regarding greed and the psychological cost of combat, Chandor's latest is still a rather generic and slightly overlong cliche which just happens to have a superb cast to push it along nicely.  

Glossed with a primary aesthetic which comes across as a hybrid between the dusty, anti-Western feel of Sicario and the militaristic sheen of Michael Mann, Triple Frontier begins with an Ocean's 11 style team-up as we see Isaac's Pope journey back into the lives of his previous Army colleagues as he attempts to woo them with an endless supply of cash which is there for the taking from the hands of Reynaldo Gallegos's drug lord, Lorea. Cue a rather enjoyable opening act in which we are treated to laddish interactions between Pope, Ben Affleck's (Gone Girl) Redfly, Charlie Hunnam's (Pacific Rim) Ironhead and Pedro Pascal's (Narcos) Catfish, as they finally agree to work together, The Expendables style, in order to carry out their unethical and highly illegal mission. Whilst there is no spoilers in saying the initial part of the heist goes without any major issues, Chandor's primary point of the movie comes into fruition just past the hour mark as we witness our leading band of war-torn killers turn on each other, and whilst I appreciate any movie which attempts to rise above its' generic conventions, Triple Frontier just becomes way too plodding as we strive through an hour of fairly repetitive set pieces as we witness the group attempt to make their escape. With a full-on level of dedication from the cast however and the likes of Isaac and strangely enough, Hunnam, on top acting form, Chandor's movie falls into the category of interesting, yet flawed, but does ultimately go down as another success for Netflix. Oh, and Chandor must love Metallica which is always a good note in my book. 

Overall Score: 6/10

Film Review: Detroit

"It's A Warzone Out There, They Are Destroying The City..."

After the early days of Near Dark and the ever enjoyable Point Break, the turn of the century has solidified Kathryn Bigelow as one of the most reliable and tantalisingly adventurous filmmakers working at this very moment in Hollywood. Becoming the first and only female in history so far to win Academy Awards for best director and best film for 2008's The Hurt Locker, Bigelow's critical success continued with the superbly crafted Zero Dark Thirty, a movie which not only marked Jessica Chastain as one of the leading acting heavyweights in the world, but one which sent a template for the type of movies Bigelow was going to make for the remainder of her entire working career. Returning this week with Detroit, a movie which follows in the footsteps of Bigelow's previous two releases by being based once again on true and wholly controversial events, the American filmmaker directs a star-studded but wholly youthful cast including the likes of John Boyega, Will Poulter and the reasonably unknown figure of Algee Smith, within a movie which is as flexible with its' dramatic tendencies as it is nail-shreddingly tense, and whilst Detroit feels almost too much of a movie at times, Bigelow's latest is a superbly entertaining thrill ride which continues her riveting hit rate when it comes to hard-as-nails cinema. 

Beginning with an animated tour guide of events leading up to the racial tensions present within the 1960's era of Detroit, Michigan, Bigelow's latest swiftly moves through a rafter of character introductions in order to set the key players up for the centerpiece of the movie which takes place within the confines of the Algiers Motel. In presenting a dramatic representation of the widely reported incident which took place between the night of the 25th and 26th of July 1967, Bigelow and journalist-turned-screenwriter Mark Boal admit to using a rafter of dramatic liberties in order to beef out a final script, and whilst the final product may indeed be a work of unsubstantiated speculation, Detroit never falls into any sort of lull to allow the audience to become that picky, particularly with a middle act which is so nail-bitingly uncomfortable that it wouldn't look strange being the centrepiece of a Ben Wheatley-directed horror movie. With Poulter on riveting top form as the film's leading antagonist and Boyega giving a suitably dramatic, if underused, leading performance, the steal of the show belongs solely in the court of Algee Smith, whose portrayal as Larry Reed is the true through-line of the movie and was the one character that managed to effectively bring a fully rounded breadth of characterisation. Where the film ultimately doesn't work is in its' belief that the bigger the film, the better it ultimately will be, and with a constantly changing central narrative which concludes with a somewhat courtroom-esque drama, Detroit doesn't hold the prestigious esteem of Zero Dark Thirty, but for two-thirds of its' runtime, it sure came close. 

Overall Score: 8/10