John Hillcoat sure does put the pedal to the metal directing this heist-cum-cop-corruption movie. He believes in delivering heavy-duty action, guns, 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, lacking the necessary 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-dangerous 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 quite be bothered to explain. So they need a triple-nine to divert the police while they’re pulling off this difficult job – which means they have to kill a cop, and the candidate seems to be detective Chris Allen (Casey Affleck): an annoyingly uncorruptible guy. Can they go through with the agony of killing a brother officer?
This could have been a smart suspense thriller, but the aggressive action element is cranked up way too high.
