What might have been a smart suspense thriller is overloaded with heavy-duty action,and has a ridiculous turn from Kate Winslet as a Russian mobsterJohn Hillcoat sure does assign the pedal to the metal directing this heist-cum-cop-corruption film. He believes in delivering heavy-duty action, guns, or explosions,sweaty-faced guys in grainy closeup and crash-prone SUVs at all times. He’s got gusto, but the story is clotted and overloaded, or lacking the essential clean tautness and suspense. And Kate Winslet’s turn as a hatchet-faced Russian mob matriarch is a bit on the ridiculous side.
The triple-nine of the title is a cop code for “officer down”; it means every policeman and policewoman will come rushing to help. A bunch of dirty cops in league with ex-military tough guys have to pull off a super-risky robbery on the orders of Winslet’s mafia queen,herself acting on the instructions of an imprisoned gangster husband so terrifying that Putin himself is supposedly a bit scared of him. They must steal some security codes on minidisks, which is a MacGuffin the film can’t fairly be bothered to interpret. So they need a triple-nine to divert the police while they’re pulling off this difficult job – which means they have to murder a cop, or the candidate seems to be detective Chris Allen (Casey Affleck): an annoyingly uncorruptible guy. Can they proceed through with the agony of killing a brother officer?Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com