It comes pretty close to being a halfway watchable heist noir, but something just never quite comes together. It has all the lyrics right, but you can’t feel the music. Prime example: the movie has a great cast, but never really does anything with them.
What Works: Any movie that stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, Woody Harrelson, Anthony Mackie, Casey Affleck, Aaron Paul, Norman Reedus (in a smaller role), Teresa Palmer, Gal Gadot, the always-underrated Clifton Collins Jr. and Kate Winslett is doing something very right. And for long stretches, the movie coasts on just having a lot of actors we like watching, before we finally realize the characters we’re watching aren’t truly pulling us in. The film never really developes its ace-cast beyond archetypes, but I did particularly like Ejiofor as the DeNiro-in-“Heat”-esque leader of the high-end robbery crew, and Kate Winslett as a tacky, but no less cunning Russian-Jewish crime matriarch. Ejiofor is rarely given a role this visceral or morally murky, and Winslett seemed to particularly enjoy leaving her polished image at the door to play a gawdily dressed, but even more ugly-on-the-inside villainess. Out of all the actors, these two felt like they were in the most against-type roles, and the down-and-dirty South looked good on them. Plus, you have to give a movie originality points for setting a crime thriller in Atlanta, and letting the central criminal organization be Russian-Jews orchestrating robberies.
What Doesn’t: But the Atlanta setting never pops out in any meaningful way, and by the end of the film you realize you could have been watching something set in L.A. just as easily. And if Ejiofor and Winslett are against type, it’s more than a little obvious to have Aaron Paul (a.k.a. the once and forever Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad) play a conflicted, screw-up drug addict or Casey Affleck to play a mumble-mouthed, twitchy hero. Still, the biggest problems aren’t unused potential of the setting or cast, so much as a script that never fleshes out these characters, and direction that is sometimes a little confusing. In certain scenes, it’s a little difficult to tell what’s happening, and I wish more time had been spent on Winslett’s heist plans because what her character wants is actually interesting…yet it’s so superficially skimmed that an inattentive movie-watcher might be lost as to what these guys are actually stealing.
What I Would Have Done Differently: By the end, there has been so much nihilistic catharsis, double crosses, and body pile-ups, that you barely care about what you just watched. “Triple 9” might hold you while you’re watching it, but the ending will leave you feeling like the only thing you watched getting stolen was your time.
Totally. Went to see and did not like it at all. Right on with what you said.
Loved the movie and all the smaller stars.Sometimes they are better than the million dollar babies.
Just like I like blogs that are a little off the beaten path, like this one.
Not all the bigger is always better type thing.
You should be writing for a magazine or paper but then I might not like it as much if you became bigger and better but big mags and news should shake it up.
Love reading your blog.