Triple Frontier (2019) (2019)
February 28, 2023 1:04 PM - Subscribe
Loyalties are tested when five friends and former special forces operatives reunite to take down a South American drug lord, unleashing a chain of unintended consequences.
Starring Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam, Garrett Hedlund, Pedro Pascal and Adria Arjona. Directed by J.C. Chandor.
Starring Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam, Garrett Hedlund, Pedro Pascal and Adria Arjona. Directed by J.C. Chandor.
JC Chandor is one of those directors who has produced consistently great work but who has flown under the radar a little bit. I've liked every one of his films so far.
It's a pity/surprise that he's doing a Kraven the Hunter movie next.
posted by d_hill at 10:05 PM on February 28, 2023
It's a pity/surprise that he's doing a Kraven the Hunter movie next.
posted by d_hill at 10:05 PM on February 28, 2023
Full disclosure - 90% of the reason I watched this is because it has my two current crushes, Oscar Isaac and Pedro Pascal, in it. “Drug heist” is not my favourite genre of movie and I found this oddly uneven but much more compelling once it reached the second half, ie the post-heist botched getaway.
I was surprised when I looked up JC Chandor after watching this and realised I’d seen two other films by him (the really excellent Margin Call and All is Lost).
In functional terms if not in billing, Oscar Isaac’s character, Santiago, is the main character - he’s the instigator of the plan, and the opening sequence which sets up the plot mechanics is just him. Ben Affleck does that thing he’s become very good at in the last ten years, of showing up in a movie looking bored and resentful at having been asked to act. It works when he’s playing beaten down characters, as he is here. At one point, I was certain that that story would end with everyone dead apart from Affleck’s character; in fact it’s exactly the other way round, with Redfly being the member of the group who struggles and always seems closest to making poor or rash decisions, in spite of the fact that the others all want him involved because at one point in the past he was supremely good at this.
I liked how the cash gradually changes from an astonishing win to a literal burden as the getaway slowly goes increasingly wrong. It’s not subtle but it works. Going in, I thought the movie was going to be a story of how five essentially decent men get corrupted by greed turn on each other; in fact, they manage to retain their decency (culminating with the joint decision at the end to give the fairly small amount of remaining cash to Redfly’s family) by giving up the cash, which increasingly means less and less to them, to the point where they burn bundles of it to keep warm in the freezing mountain night. I liked all the different ways the cash gets diminished as the story goes on — the cash they dump in an effort to keep the helicopter flying, the mule falling to its death, the money used to buy off the village after they kill a number of civilians, the campfire.
posted by damsel with a dulcimer at 11:41 PM on February 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
I was surprised when I looked up JC Chandor after watching this and realised I’d seen two other films by him (the really excellent Margin Call and All is Lost).
In functional terms if not in billing, Oscar Isaac’s character, Santiago, is the main character - he’s the instigator of the plan, and the opening sequence which sets up the plot mechanics is just him. Ben Affleck does that thing he’s become very good at in the last ten years, of showing up in a movie looking bored and resentful at having been asked to act. It works when he’s playing beaten down characters, as he is here. At one point, I was certain that that story would end with everyone dead apart from Affleck’s character; in fact it’s exactly the other way round, with Redfly being the member of the group who struggles and always seems closest to making poor or rash decisions, in spite of the fact that the others all want him involved because at one point in the past he was supremely good at this.
I liked how the cash gradually changes from an astonishing win to a literal burden as the getaway slowly goes increasingly wrong. It’s not subtle but it works. Going in, I thought the movie was going to be a story of how five essentially decent men get corrupted by greed turn on each other; in fact, they manage to retain their decency (culminating with the joint decision at the end to give the fairly small amount of remaining cash to Redfly’s family) by giving up the cash, which increasingly means less and less to them, to the point where they burn bundles of it to keep warm in the freezing mountain night. I liked all the different ways the cash gets diminished as the story goes on — the cash they dump in an effort to keep the helicopter flying, the mule falling to its death, the money used to buy off the village after they kill a number of civilians, the campfire.
posted by damsel with a dulcimer at 11:41 PM on February 28, 2023 [2 favorites]
Ben Affleck does that thing he’s become very good at in the last ten years, of showing up in a movie looking bored and resentful at having been asked to act. It works when he’s playing beaten down characters, as he is here.
That's a very good observation. One of the reasons why the Zack Snyder version of the Justice League doesn't work (and why so many people were happy to see Keaton put the cowl back on for the upcoming Flash movie) is that "Batfleck" always seems on the verge of pausing, sighing, and mumbling, "I am so sick of this shit." Which would certainly be an original take on the character, but also essentially wrong.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:27 AM on March 1, 2023
That's a very good observation. One of the reasons why the Zack Snyder version of the Justice League doesn't work (and why so many people were happy to see Keaton put the cowl back on for the upcoming Flash movie) is that "Batfleck" always seems on the verge of pausing, sighing, and mumbling, "I am so sick of this shit." Which would certainly be an original take on the character, but also essentially wrong.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:27 AM on March 1, 2023
I liked all the different ways the cash gets diminished as the story goes on — the cash they dump in an effort to keep the helicopter flying, the mule falling to its death, the money used to buy off the village after they kill a number of civilians, the campfire.
Not to mention all the cash that you could assume was still buried in the walls of the house that they burned.
I started this up thinking it would be a pretty dumb shoot-em-up movie, but ended up being pleasantly surprised with it. I liked that there was a lot more to it than just the main heist part of getting into Lorea's compound and grabbing the cash; that the ramifications of what they did were dealt with a little; that the main characters weren't super ridiculous assassins like John Wick or Jason Bourne or something like that - they're very good at what they do, but there's no crazy gun-fu battles, just infiltrating and dispatching threats from seriously overmatched guards as they come up.
posted by LionIndex at 9:46 AM on March 1, 2023
Not to mention all the cash that you could assume was still buried in the walls of the house that they burned.
I started this up thinking it would be a pretty dumb shoot-em-up movie, but ended up being pleasantly surprised with it. I liked that there was a lot more to it than just the main heist part of getting into Lorea's compound and grabbing the cash; that the ramifications of what they did were dealt with a little; that the main characters weren't super ridiculous assassins like John Wick or Jason Bourne or something like that - they're very good at what they do, but there's no crazy gun-fu battles, just infiltrating and dispatching threats from seriously overmatched guards as they come up.
posted by LionIndex at 9:46 AM on March 1, 2023
…"Batfleck" always seems on the verge of pausing, sighing, and mumbling, "I am so sick of this shit." Which would certainly be an original take on the character, but also essentially wrong.
Yes, 100% this.
…the main characters weren't super ridiculous assassins…
The more I think about it, Triple Frontier is a bit of an outlier in this genre of movie. The main characters all share a kind of decency/morality and the key dramatic tension in the story is whether they will retain it, and in the end, the twist is that they do - except for Redfly, who shoots the villager and then dies in turn when the man’s son follows them to get revenge. It’s Redfly who suggests that the smart thing to do would be to kill Yovanna, since she’s the only one who can link them to Lorea (and Charlie Hunnam’s character observes “You don’t come back from that.”) Santiago, meanwhile, is determined to follow through and do right by Yovanna and her brother, and although he wants the money, he’s also genuinely motivated by the desire to take out Lorea, who he’s been trying and failing to get to through legitimate means. And then, when they get near the coast and they find out that the port is patrolled by armed teenagers, Santiago has a moment where in frustration and desperation, he nearly cracks and declares, “Let’s just go through them”, before one of the others takes him aside and talks sense into him — whereupon he comes back to the group and apologises for making the suggestion. Yes, these men are killers - it’s an action/thriller movie - but they have a sense of morality which is at least recognisable to a real-world audience, where a lot of the time in these kinds of stories, they just don’t operate in the same moral universe at all.
posted by damsel with a dulcimer at 11:01 AM on March 1, 2023
Yes, 100% this.
…the main characters weren't super ridiculous assassins…
The more I think about it, Triple Frontier is a bit of an outlier in this genre of movie. The main characters all share a kind of decency/morality and the key dramatic tension in the story is whether they will retain it, and in the end, the twist is that they do - except for Redfly, who shoots the villager and then dies in turn when the man’s son follows them to get revenge. It’s Redfly who suggests that the smart thing to do would be to kill Yovanna, since she’s the only one who can link them to Lorea (and Charlie Hunnam’s character observes “You don’t come back from that.”) Santiago, meanwhile, is determined to follow through and do right by Yovanna and her brother, and although he wants the money, he’s also genuinely motivated by the desire to take out Lorea, who he’s been trying and failing to get to through legitimate means. And then, when they get near the coast and they find out that the port is patrolled by armed teenagers, Santiago has a moment where in frustration and desperation, he nearly cracks and declares, “Let’s just go through them”, before one of the others takes him aside and talks sense into him — whereupon he comes back to the group and apologises for making the suggestion. Yes, these men are killers - it’s an action/thriller movie - but they have a sense of morality which is at least recognisable to a real-world audience, where a lot of the time in these kinds of stories, they just don’t operate in the same moral universe at all.
posted by damsel with a dulcimer at 11:01 AM on March 1, 2023
Afleck aside, very strong leads.
For sure, this is a better movie than many of its ilk, especially around the mid-movie mark.
posted by porpoise at 5:46 PM on March 3, 2023
For sure, this is a better movie than many of its ilk, especially around the mid-movie mark.
posted by porpoise at 5:46 PM on March 3, 2023
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Not sure if this is intentional, but it plays into this myopic American fantasy that if we just sent the military down to the Spanish speaking countries to kill all the bad guy drug lords, we'd solve the drug problem. Hopefully showing how even our best operators, engaging with no rules but their own, can fuck up a mission like this and kill innocents cuts that sentiment a bit, but who knows.
posted by Hume at 1:48 PM on February 28, 2023 [1 favorite]