Triple 9 review

[Westside Steve]

Triple nine

 

Open road

 

R. 115 min

 

 

 

 

The week after the Oscars is usually a pretty bad week for the box office. Folks tend to catch up on the nominees they missed over the last year and the studios don't bother putting much out that's worthwhile. I won't waste much time on this one but as I was perusing the entertainment sites I saw an article that wondered why TRIPLE NINE was such a failure so far. Not reading the entire article I assumed someone thought it was a nice piece of work that was unfairly being overlooked. So I decided to see what the controversy was about. I haven't gone back to the article but I'm hoping their conclusion was the film didn't do well because it sucked.

 

I won't waste a lot of your time because TRIPLE NINE doesn't deserve it but its an ugly and unpleasant action potboiler with a simple but still almost incomprehensible storyline. So regardless of the conclusions of the author I mentioned the actual reason for its failure is that it stinks. A lot.

 

Kate Winslet, Woody Harrelson and Casey Affleck head the cast of this intercity crime drama which has the look of East LA or the South Bronx but is actually set in the slums of Atlanta Georgia. I doubt that the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce is pleased but what the hell.

 

The chief bad guy, well bad gal, is Winslet some sort of evil Israeli who takes a page from the character profile of Natasha Badenov from Rocky and Bullwinkle.

 

She is put together a team of big time bank robbers made up of dirty cops, gang members and all around ne'er-do-wells in order to get her hands on what seems to be a big box of international software. Hard to tell because it actually looks like a fulfilled with floppy disks for the Atari game system.

 

Of course none of these mugs trust her and the only way she keeps them together is through kidnapping and holding hostage the leaders boy. Exactly, she doesn't trust them either

 

Since nothing else really happens the audience is treated to a couple hours of nasty gang violence with no particular point nor any way to tell the good guys from the bad guys.

 

Luckily after 30 minutes you probably won't care, well except for the fact you realize there's still another hour and a half to sit through.

 

There's not much in the ending to blow for you but let me say that a lot of people wind up dead, but since you don't really like anybody who cares?

 

One minor distraction, which isn't enough to sink the film alone, is the fact that I find myself wishing they would pause for 5 minutes and make every one of the characters take a shower. I know it's film but you can almost smell this unkempt and grubby group of hoodlums.

 

Probably somebody out there will think this over the top potpourri of violence and filth is gritty or edgy, and it is, but it's still no fun at all.

 

 

D

 

 

WSS