You know that feeling you get when you attend or even just watch a star studded ceremony on TV? All the celebrities are there looking all types of nice and even though they aren't really doing anything productive or entertaining, probably just sitting there, watching the proceedings or mingling among themselves, you are still excited to just see them. That's exactly how it feels to watch "Triple 9". It is one of the films that could easily rank high on a list of movies with the strongest cast ensemble and yet its almost like they are just there for show because they do absolutely nothing.
The plot is quite typical (and really stupid in some areas), but the storyline has so much going on you would expect the film to be fast paced action drama galore. Instead it just comes off so weakly and lazily; and never piece together quite nicely.
Three criminals Michael Atwood (Chiwetel Ejiofor), Russell Welch (Norman Reedus) and his brother Gabe (Aaron Paul), along with two corrupt cops; Marcus Belmont (Anthony Mackie) and Franco Rodriguez (Clifton Collins, Jr.) rob a bank to retrieve a safe deposit box that contains information that could overturn the conviction of Irina's (Kate Winslet) husband; a Russian mafia boss. When they return with the safety deposit box, Irina refuses to pay them their reward money and orders them to complete another mission which involves breaking into a government office and stealing more data. To emphasize her point, she kills Michael.
The whole angle of a gang of robbers being manipulated into unwillingly committing a crime just to settle a score with an associate (while obviously standing to gain something too) reminded me a lot of "Takers". Then the fact that this group of criminals also has a set of two brothers contributed even more similarities between the two flicks, and guess what? A cop gets shot here two!!! Actually, two cops and a detective, but who's counting?
To pull off the second robbery, Marcus and Franco suggest a Triple 9, which is a code for an "officer down" call that sends all of the police to the location of the incident (yes, now we understand what the title of the movie means). This will distract cops from getting alerted to their crime. Marcus nominates his new partner, Chris Allen (Casey Affleck) as the officer to be shot (we'll just go on and kill the new guy, won't we?). However, Gabe gets cold feet when he realizes that Sergeant Detective Jeffrey Allen (Woody Harrelson) who is investigating the bank robbery and is also Chris' uncle, has linked him to Russell and the crime. So he tries to stop the heist.
To cut a long story short, it is pretty much a series of conflict after conflict from here on. Even though conflict is usually good and comes with a lot of excitement, this felt like too much yet too little. It's like too much was thrown at us yet not with near enough impact.
While Gabe tries to stop Chris from getting shot, he gets killed and Marcus also gets shot, triggering Chris to make the 999 call. After the job is done, Irina and her men are killed by a bomb planted by Michael who also gets killed by Franco who is overcome by greed and wants to keep all the money for himself. He doesn't last long though as Jeffrey catches up to his corruption and there's a shoot out during confrontation in which Franco dies (I did say that too much goes on in the storyline). So everyone pretty much dies, except for Marcus, but unlike in "Set It Off", we don't see him shaving his hair off and running off to foreign land for a fresh start.
Everything just seems so convenient (the gang has first hand access into the police force, Jeffrey is Chris' uncle) yet it all goes wrong from all sides. It's like the writers were trying a bit too hard to keep us either holding or catching breath. The cast gave stellar performance even though the movie still somehow manages to just fall flat (and I just wasn't too convinced by the choice of Kate as a mafioso, even though she brought her A game). I had the best time drooling over the men though; Anthony Mackie has always had some kind of effect on me, but my adrenaline triggers really just stayed intact the whole time!
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