Triple Frontier: Film Review

I must admit I’m still not completely on top of Netflix film releases but I took notice of Triple Frontier because of the talent onboard, with Margin Call and A Most Violent Year’s J.C. Chandor up front as director and co-writer, along with Zero Dark Thirty’s Mark Boal, and a cast which includes Ben Affleck and Oscar Isaac. That’s an impressive lineup!

Isaac stars as Santiago ‘Pope’ Garcia, a private military adviser who has spent years in Colombia fighting drug crime and trying to track down drug lord Lorea. When he finally discovers his location, he decides to create his own, completely private mission with his old buddies from the Special Forces – Tom (Affleck), William (Charlie Hunnam), his brother Ben (Garrett Hedlund) and pilot Catfish (Pedro Pascal) – to kill Lorea and steal his money.

The film takes its sweet time laying the groundwork for the mission and following Pope as he tries to get the gang back together, particularly as he experiences resistance from Tom, who ultimately agrees to come onboard. There’s a lot of negotiations going on, so the film takes a while to really get going but it was still interesting watching this cool cast come together. It really hits its stride when they get to Lorea’s house – the tension builds and I was bracing myself for something to go wrong. I thought that was going to be the main crux of the story, but that comes about an hour in and there’s another hour and a bit to go – so the rest is a complete surprise and trust me, there are some shocks in store.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing but this film is really infuriating to watch. Everything that goes wrong is a consequence of them being greedy and I had no sympathy for them because I was mentally scolding them like, ‘Well if you weren’t so greedy you wouldn’t be in this mess!’ In the final hour, the pace does start to drag somewhat. The intensity of the house break-in and helicopter escape wanes and you just want them to reach their frickin’ destination.

Affleck played a cold bastard and he did it very well. I was just so shocked by his character’s behaviour sometimes! Isaac is always good value and it was awesome to see him speaking Spanish and Pascal is such a cool dude. Hunnam and Hedlund’s characters were pretty indistinct and could have been played by anybody, and Hunnam’s accent was all over the place and I wasn’t sure what he was going for.

I loved the premise and I enjoy Isaac in basically everything but I could have done with Triple Frontier being a bit shorter and snappier towards the end. The midsection was so exciting and thrilling and there are some genuinely shocking twists so it’s a shame that I was done with it about 15-20 mins before the end. I definitely recommend a watch though.

Streaming on Netflix now