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Triple 9: Mini-review

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Woody Harrleson

Woody Harrelson is one of many wasting their time and talent in Triple 9

C-In police lingo, a Code 999 means “Officer down – urgent help needed.” The makers of the new action thriller Triple 9 might well have sent out a Code 999 of their own. For, despite an excellent cast and two dazzling set pieces, Triple 9‘s script needed some urgent rewriting help that never arrived.

The movie starts with a bang as a highly trained crew of crooked cops and ex-military criminals led by Michael Atwood (Chiwetel Ejiofor) pull off an elaborate daylight bank robbery. As cover for an even more dangerous second robbery, the team decide to kill Chris Allen (Casey Affleck), the new partner of Marcus Belmont (Anthony Mackie), one of the crooked cops in the crew. However, Chris’s uncle, Jeffrey (Woody Harrelson) just happens to be the detective investigating the first robbery.

Director John Hillcoat has a cornucopia of acting talent at his disposal in Triple 9, including Kate Winslet as a Russian mobster’s wife calling the shots for the robbers and Aaron Paul and Norman Reedus as two more crew members. In addition, Hillcoat brilliantly stages both the bank robbery and a shootout at an apartment complex (shown in the clip below). These sequences bring to mind the bank robbery scene in Michael Mann‘s Heat, a film that Triple 9 screenwriter Matt Cook undoubtedly tried to emulate. However, Cook’s script is hopelessly muddled as he tries and repeatedly fails to depict the morally ambiguous nature of almost every character in the movie. Triple 9 simply has too many characters competing for too little screen time. Chiewetel Ejiofor is top billed, but in two hours, virtually the only thing the audience learns about him is that he has a son that the Russians are keeping away from him. The plot has the expected twists and double crosses, but the audience will probably be too weary from trying to keep up with the characters to pay much attention. With a script this lackluster and confusing, it’s no surprise that Woody Harrelson comes off best here, livening up nearly every scene with zingers and one-liners. When Harrelson is onscreen or the action is going down, Triple 9 comes alive, but otherwise, it’s a cinematic Code 10—off duty.
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Secret in Their Eyes: Mini-review

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Nicole Kidman

Nicole Kidman adds her considerable star power to Secret in Their Eyes

C+The phrase, “It loses something in the translation,” seems to apply with distressing frequency to American remakes of acclaimed foreign films. The latest example of this phenomenon is Secret in Their Eyes, a remake of the highly acclaimed 2009 Best Foreign Film Oscar winner from Argentina. Despite the presence of high-octane stars Nicole Kidman and Julia Roberts, as well as Chiwetel Ejiofor, in the cast, the new film never rises above the level of a routine thriller.

Secret in Their Eyes follows two investigations into the same crime occurring 13 years apart. In 2002, the teenage daughter of FBI agent Jess Cobb (Roberts) is brutally raped and murdered. Fellow FBI agent Ray Karsten (Ejiofor) soon arrests a suspect, but Assistant DA Claire Sloan (Kidman) has to release him because the man is working as an informant against possible post-9/11 terrorists. The suspect soon disappears, but years later, Karsten, now a private investigator, thinks that he has located the killer and seeks Claire’s help in making an arrest.

In the original version of Secret in Their Eyes, the victim was a married woman whose husband ‘s grief led the police detective to pursue the investigation of what had become a cold case. The detective empathized with the widower because of his own unrequited love for the prosecuting attorney. Ironically, replacing a relatively minor character in the original with Julia Roberts, who is an integral part of the task force, harms the entire dynamic of the film. Director Billy Ray beefs up Roberts’ role by providing flashback scenes of happier times with Jess and her daughter to explain Ray’s continued pursuit of the case for a decade, thus reducing Claire’s character to mere eye candy. The result is a routine procedural, replete with shootouts and chases, and not all that credible a one. The national security rationale for dropping the case given by the district attorney (Alfred Molina) never rings true with Jess sitting in the next room grieving about her lost daughter. Kidman still has the most effective moment in Secret in Their Eyes, an interrogation scene in which she uses her sex appeal to elicit an incriminating reaction by the suspect. Beyond that, the movie feels oddly drained of passion until the shock ending that, while still powerful, is far more muddled than in the original. There’s simply too little secret left in Secret in Their Eyes.
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