The best scene in “Triple 9” is arguably its first real set-piece, the robbery of a downtown Atlanta bank by former special ops mastermind Michael Atwood (Chiwetel Ejiofor), dirty cop #1 Marcus Belmont (Anthony Mackie), dirty cop #2 Jorge Rodriguez (Clifton Collins Jr.), getaway man Russel Welch (Norman Reedus), and his brother Gabe (Aaron Paul), a character who might as well being wearing a red shirt and named “Future Liability.” Hillcoat and cinematographer Nicolas Karakatsanis (“The Drop”) frame the bank robbery beautifully, taking us from the high-pressure of the vault to the getaway gone wrong after a red dye pack explodes. It’s tense, well-shot and sets up the audience for a high stakes thriller that never comes.
It turns out the quintet wasn’t there for the money—they were tasked with stealing a very specific safety deposit box by Russian mob mastermind Irina Vlaslov (Kate Winslet), who is now refusing to pay the group until they perform another job. Irina has control over Michael because Michael has a son with Irina’s sister Elena (Gal Gadot) that the Russians are basically holding hostage, not allowing his father to see him. This plot thread is not only poorly-developed, it’s a little morally grotesque in that it feels designed to create sympathy for someone who should be a villain, especially when we learn what the title means.
If you don’t know, 999 is the code for “officer down.” In their planning of the second heist, which involves a Homeland Security building, the group decides that the best way to distract the rest of the force will be to kill a cop. As they say, every car responds to a triple nine. And they’ll all be distracted enough to not be able to respond to the new heist. Conveniently, Marcus gets a green new partner in Chris Allen (Casey Affleck). They’ll set up Allen to get killed, and pull off one final job for Irina while the city is descending on the crime scene. They never bother to consider that Allen’s uncle (Woody Harrelson) is leading the investigation into who they are. Or that the increasingly unstable Gabe is a problem. Or that their entire plan is based on a lot of coincidences and plot holes that we only see in movies.
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