J.C. Chandor’s Triple Frontier finds five ex-soldiers planning the heist of a South American drug lord to finally get something back for years of service in the army. With an all star cast consisting of Oscar Isaac, Ben Affleck, Charlie Hunnam, Petro Pascal and Garrett Hedlund, Triple Frontier certainly has the ingredients for a very fun time here, and yet this certainly isn’t the usual action fest.
The film gets going pretty fast with the aforementioned heist going down fairly early on in the runtime, now this isn’t in itself a bad thing but what we miss out on here is learning more about these characters and the drive behind the decisions they make. There are some reasons given but we are unfortunately mostly told instead of shown.
The heist sequence is probably my favorite section of the film with great building of tension and dread as the time they have is slowly running out, the characters feel at home here, with great interactions and performances from all.
This is where Chandor excels, here is a tense heist / action sequence that somehow doesn’t feel very action oriented and it almost feels subdued at times.
After the heist Triple Frontier spends the rest of it’s runtime following the group attempting to escape the country with the money they stole, which brings me to one of my main issues with the film, it’s stakes. The main feeling I got from Triple Frontier was that apart from the wonderfully tense heist, the remainder of the film’s stakes felt like they were all at the same level and even though there were some pretty good character moments, I didn’t really connect with any of the characters as much as I have in other films or feel dread for them.
Triple Frontier has a solid premise, and a well-directed heist sequence with a great cast, I just can’t help but feel the third act fizzles out a bit, but then again maybe that’s the point? I’ll definitely be giving it another watch when it launches on Netflix next week in case I see something different on a second viewing with some fresh eyes.
Thanks to Netflix Australia for providing a screener for review.
