Chris At The Pictures

At the time of writing this review it’s been three days since I saw Triple 9 and without the IMDB synopsis, the story would have all but slipped from my brain, which rather puts a dampener on a film with so much promise. Who could have predicted that John Hillcoat, director of The Road, could lead a diverse cast including Chiwetel Ejiofor, Anthony Mackie, Kate Winslet, Casey Affleck and Gal Gadot to such a flat-footed result?

The setup promoted by the punchy trailer seems simple enough: a group of corrupt cops and criminal associates need to complete one last job for a Russian crime lord (Kate Winslet). In order to clear the heist zone of police, they initiate a triple 9 – the death of a police officer that will draw the authorities away from the prize. But nothing is ever without complications, and restless Sergeant Allen (Woody Harrelson) recruits idealistic Chris (Casey Affleck) to confirm his suspicions of approaching threat.

All the individual elements that intimate new ideas seem to have sparked from someone on the production team saying “wouldn’t it be cool if…” rather than pooling ideas on what best serves the story. Take, for instance, Harrelson’s stars 'n’ stripes tie: a comment on the law restrained by state, perhaps? Or what of the explosion of red dye accompanying the introductory bank job: a likely problem during a getaway? In answer to both, no. They’re eye-catching tics with minimal substance. 

While any glimmers of originality are superficial at best, the remaining plot elements are visibly pinched from a plethora of distinguished crime thrillers: we get a mounting body count in the final stretch akin to The Departed, Mackie’s character gets a reversion of the criminal/cop guilt-trip from Point Break (though sadly bereft of the gun-toting moment Hot Fuzz parodied so well), and a roadside shootout of the Heat variety ensues with ear-bursting peal.

Michael Mann’s 1995 film is a clear influence throughout, not least the interpretation of the city as a secondary character: the various creatures of the night take second billing to forsaken back alleys and grubby car parks, whilst a frothy electronic score bubbles beneath the surface.

A fidgety approach to character development throughout means we’re never quite sure who to root for. Not due to any discreet suggestion of moral ambiguity, but simply because the best we get of any character is a mere thumbnail before leaping across town to the next. Affleck gets the most to work with as the clueless man of principle, but we’re left pining for more from Mackie’s corrupt cop or Winslet’s fabulous Irina. Seriously, why bother casting Kate Winslet as a cold-hearted Russian Mafioso if the best we get of her is a two-minute snapshot? And all the while, the usually incomparable Ejiofor is lost amongst the gravel.

The conclusion packs a bloody punch and brings sufficient resolution, but highlights the contrast with the ill-disciplined opening salvo. Triple 9 has so much potential on a piece-by-piece level that it’s impossible not to find some attraction, but the final model is clumsily constructed and wonkily mounted. For all the brute force in its gunplay, it barely leaves an exit wound.

Labor Day (adapted from the best-selling novel by Joyce Maynard), is a romantic drama featuring Kate Winslet as a single mother who is out food shopping when an escaped convict (Josh Brolin) forces her and her son Henry (Gattlin Griffith) to become hostages in their own home until he is ready to go on the run. Told to the audience from the perspective of an older Henry (Tobey Maguire), the film explores how the outcast Frank and Adele (Winslet) begin to form a strange and intimate relationship as the story unfolds.

In the press book for the film, it describes it as ‘a poignant and heart-warming movie’ and uses phrases such as ‘mid-life renaissance’ and ‘the ties that bind’, cliché phrases that one invokes at their peril. We’ve gotten so used to these kinds of phrases being thrown around any old ‘romance’ film that it’s hard not to raise a cynical eyebrow when going in…and unfortunately for Labor Day, the scepticism is well founded. The film just can’t decide what it wants to be, on the one hand attempting to tackle a melodrama whilst precariously balancing a rather forced coming-of-age story in the other.

The first thirty minutes of the film – which includes most of the footage shown in the trailer – details Adele and Henry meeting Frank, who subsequently holds them under house arrest, then proceeds to (in a very Nicholas Sparks-ian way) start doing odd jobs around the house, teaching the young boy how to play baseball and (I’m not making this up, watch the trailer) helps mother and son make a pie in an almost vomit-inducingly saccharine way. The entire film – save for flashbacks – all seems to take place in late afternoon, the characters and locations constantly bathed in the sort of golden light you’d normally see in a Ferrero Rocher advert, and it’s all under laid with an irritating, ‘ooh look how soft and sweet this is’ musical score and selection of songs.

Performance-wise, Josh Brolin handles the role given to him very well, whilst Winslet just kept reminding me how good she was in Revolutionary Road, a much darker film which gave her a lot more room to breathe in her role as a tortured single mother. Despite his very little screen time, Tobey Maguire gives the most believable performance, whilst Griffith appears to spend most of the film simply staring unblinkingly at everyone and everything with his mouth hung open. Perhaps the most enjoyable character comes from Clark Gregg as Adele’s ex-husband, his scenes actually injecting some light-hearted humour into the drab of everything else around him.

The problem that underlies everything else is that the film just can’t decide on a tone, the pie-making scene clumsily juxtaposed with the realisation that Frank is still a dangerous criminal and that if I was Adele, I would have called the police about fifty times by now, the suspension of disbelief rapidly becoming suspension of common sense. The all-too-brief scenes of real darkness much later in the film are badly misjudged and clash horribly with the sugary-sweet romantic elements established earlier on and is not helped by the (admittedly handsome) cinematography that bathes everything in over-exposed light. 

Having never read the source material, I can’t comment on whether Labor Day is an effective adaptation or not, but purely as a film it just doesn’t hold together, the few good performances and enticing cinematography providing little foundation for the mishandled tone and saccharine atmosphere.

2 Stars