Context lost as heist film goes awry
The influence of Vietnam War films hangs heavily over Triple Frontier, Netflix’ testosterone-fuelled men-on-amission film. From the sweltering jungle setting, to the constant visual allusions to Apocalypse Now, to the soundtrack filled with Dad-rock tunes, J.C. Chandor’s new film attempts to capture some of the spirit of the numerous classic works that came out of America’s most infamous conflict.
The film stars Oscar Isaac, Ben Affleck, Pedro Pascal, Garrett Hedlund and Charlie Hunnam — some of our most under-utilised leading men approaching middle age — as a group of exmilitary bros lured into a private operation by Isaac’s morally dubious leader to pull off a daring heist of a ruthless South American drug lord’s mansion, driven by the desperation that comes with being a veteran in the United States. The idea is not a bad one: as scripted by Chandor and Mark Boal and produced by Kathryn Bigelow — the minds behind The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, though this film cleaves closer to their seething, problematic Detroit — the film is attempting to wrangle the Westernlike conceit of grizzled war-dogs pulling off One Last Job into something morally complex, even questionable, much like any modern conflict in 2019.
Chandor, a strong film-maker with a great talent for staging and execution — most notably here in the tense, dimly lit heist sequence that takes place in torrential South American rain — has directed a few very good films that nevertheless fall frustratingly short of greatness (Margin Call, All Is Lost). Triple Frontier sadly, though incredibly well-shot and packed with interesting ideas, feels like a step backward.
The action is agreeably thumping and the actors, particularly Affleck, are clearly enjoying playing sinking their teeth into a group of heroes whose heroism becomes increasingly less viable as the mistakes begin to pile up and the mission goes awry. The outlier here is Isaac himself, whose performance is undoubtedly the strongest (the man can play slippery and mysterious in his sleep) but feels almost overqualified for this material. I found myself longing for the film to match his consistently elevated work. There’s a place for this kind of muscular, military-for-jocks kind of film, but what Triple Frontier ultimately intends to say about the lack of support for veterans and the incredibly shady business of private military operations in developing countries is consistently murky, to the point that it never really clicks with the ambling fallout of the team’s robbery. It’s a film that attempts to capture the essence of the great Vietnam War films but crucially forgets to adequately fill in the shades of grey. Tom Augustine