What we have with the Australian director John Hillcoat is a great film‑maker who’s seemingly incapable of making a great film. You search for an excuse to add a fourth or even fifth star to the initial three, but none are forthcoming. As with his previous two features, 2009’s The Road and 2012’s Lawless, this new one offers high style, inventive violence and svelte action choreography, all put to the service of… not that much. Kate Winslet is the bleach-blond Russian crime boss out to spring her husband from the gulag, but she requires the assistance of some immoral yanks (a few crims, a few cops) willing to execute a number of dangerous heists in and around Atlanta, Georgia. With too many characters, too many plot strands and a mobile-detonation bomb where its heart should be, no amount of buck‑toothed Woody Harrelson, wistful con Chiwetel Ejiofor or ripped everyman Casey Affleck can save this from comfortable mediocrity.
