Triple 9: heist film with all-star cast sneaks up on critics

Heist thriller Triple 9 has been keeping a low profile despite its all-star cast, so is it any good? Well, some critics are calling it "brilliant".

Directed by John Hillcoat and opening in the UK this week, Triple 9 features a stellar ensemble including Casey Affleck, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Aaron Paul, Woody Harrelson, Kate Winslet and Norman Reedus.

It follows a group of corrupt Atlanta police officers blackmailed by the Russian mafia into carrying out a near impossible heist. With their backs against the wall, they hatch an evil plan involving killing a rookie cop to distract the rest of the force - "officer down" - while they carry out their robbery.

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With a cast like this, "why is no-one really talking about it?" asks Tom Eames on Digital Spy. "It should be on everyone's cinema wishlist!"

It hasn't got off to the best of starts in the UK, admits Eames, who says dozens of people around the country attended secret Cineworld screenings thinking they were actually going to watch Deadpool – "whoops".

In fact, there is a harrowing shootout in Triple 9 that seems like a more realistic version of the opening standoff in Deadpool, says Justin Chang in Variety. But this is "a modern-day heist thriller of unusually grim, coiled intensity".

It's well suited to Hillcoat's gifts for low-boil suspense and "brutal eruptions of violence", he adds, saying "the film has grit and atmosphere to burn" and the eerie sense of paranoia will have viewers "checking their car backseats upon exiting the theatre".

Indeed, it may look nothing out of the ordinary, notes James Mottram on List Film. Bank jobs, dirty cops, Russian mobsters and Latino gangs make it feel like "another Grand Theft Auto", he says, but it is "a visceral ride, compellingly told with a first-rate ensemble cast". It reinvigorates the heist sub-genre with a huge shot of adrenaline, that'll "leave you buzzing".

Triple 9 is "tight, taut and brilliantly structured", says Tom Huddleston in Time Out. It's "old-school to the core", he continues. "Fans of The Wire, James Ellroy, freeway shootouts, black balaclavas, burning trucks, betrayal and the words 'everybody get on the floor!', step right up".

But not everyone was convinced.

Todd McCarthy in the Hollywood Reporter calls it a "relentless dirty-cop thriller drenched in a sulphurous atmosphere of corruption and dread" that will attract an ample audience with a taste for tough guys and hard action, even though "it's a full-time job trying to suss out the dramatic intricacies".

Still, the actors are deeply committed, he adds, and everyone has their moments, although it's Winslet's unique crime boss "who most sticks in the mind".