Triple Frontier (2019)
Directed by J.C. Chandor
Struggling to make ends meet, former special ops soldiers reunite for a high-stakes heist: stealing $75 million from a South American drug lord.
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What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: It’s hard not to think of Ocean’s Eleven , especially as Isaac recruits his semi-reluctant elite team (Affleck is clearly the Brad Pitt to Isaac’s George Clooney).
“Ocean’s Eleven” meets “Zero Dark Thirty” in the Netflix thriller “Triple Frontier,” starring Oscar Isaac and Ben Affleck as special-forces veterans who decide to take their skill set private.
The pieces are there, and they are admittedly familiar; for example, a film like Ocean’s Eleven or even something more comedic like The World’s End may come to mind.
The first half is a slow-burn action film that shows the contributions of Oscar-winning screenwriter Mark Boal, who revives elements of “The Hurt Locker” (2009) for the opening action sequence and elements of “Zero Dark Thirty” (2012) for a compound raid that recalls Seal Team Six raiding Osama bin Laden’s hideout.
The film, written by journalist turned screenwriter Mark Boal of “The Hurt Locker” and “Zero Dark Thirty” fame, begins rather familiarly as Oscar Isaac’s Santiago reconnects with his former Special Ops buddies hoping they will join him on a high-paying, very illegal legal operation in South America, the film eventually turns into a cautionary tale about greed, very much akin to past classics “Treasure of the Sierra Madre” and “Wages of Fear”…
The talent pool continues with director/co-writer J.C. Chandor ( All Is Lost , Margin Call ) and co-writer Mark Boal ( The Hurt Locker , 2008; Zero Dark Thirty , 2012), but for every element that works here there are two others that continually pull the film down to the level of the generic and overly familiar.
That opening scene doesn’t make it seem like much, but the film from director J. C. Chandor and screenwriter Mark Boal (who has played around with these themes before, in Zero Dark Thirty and The Hurt Locker) is at its best when it goes that route—analytical and critical—instead of blindly supportive.
Boal who worked with director Kathryn Bigelow on Oscar-touched Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty , once intended to collaborate with Bigelow again on Triple Frontier , a concept that once caught the interest of such A-listers as Tom Hanks, Johnny Depp, Will Smith, Tom Hardy, Mark Wahlberg, Channing Tatum and Mahershala Ali.
And they’re in much grittier, much more hardcore material, thanks to the no-nonsense, tension-building directing style of J.C. Chandor (“All Is Lost,” “A Most Violent Year”) and the barbed-wire-sharp script from Chandor and the great journalist turned screenwriter Mark Boal of “The Hurt Locker” and “Zero Dark Thirty” fame.
“It’s like they take your best 20 years and spit you out,” says Redfly, echoing the group’s thoughts that after serving their country, their lives should be better off – a theme also brought up in films like “Thank You for Your Service" and "American Sniper."
Film buffs will instantly think of John Huston’s “Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1948), David O. Russell’s “Three Kings” (1999) and Doug Liman’s “American Made” (2017) — all superior works.
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In “Triple Frontier,” Chandor teams with cinematographer Roman Vasyanov (“End of Watch,” “Fury”) for very realistic action sequences with methodical maneuvers rather than shaky-cam chaos.
Not only do he and cinematographer Roman Vasyanov ( Fury , End of Watch ) shoot an absolutely stunning film, but Chandor makes excellent use of the style and tropes of the genres he explores to consistently defy all expectations of the audience.
His camera, aided by cinematographer Roman Vasyanov (“End of Watch” “Fury”) shows the chops of a confident maestro, a filmmaker who is in total control of his mise-en-scene, even if he’s detrimented by Boal’s all-too-stuffy, twist-filled screenplay that sometimes feels rote and predictable.
Often times, watching Triple Frontier resembles a curious offspring of The Town and The Revenant, sadly not living up to the potential of that concept.
Its leads — Affleck, Hunnam, Hedlund, Oscar Isaac, and Pedro Pascal — are all the stereotypically manliest of men, and their rogue mission to give the middle finger to both the system and to a prosperous drug lord seems like the only other necessary ingredient for your typical Den of Thieves or Expendables -esque romp through the unnamed but un-American jungle.