"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.
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