Movies with a deeper message can be a great thing. With the constant complaint from the average moviegoer being, “there aren’t any original ideas left in Hollywood anymore,” it’s always refreshing to see something that’s not only original, but also has something more to say than just tell a story, whether it be a satire, social commentary, or something that’s meant to help steer people in the right direction. While there are plenty of great movies that have a great meaning behind them, it’s very easy for them to be done wrong and be too on-the-nose - best case example being 2011’s God Bless America, which kept hammering the same statements over and over repeatedly without saying anything substantial about the observations made. However, there are also those rare movies that aren’t quite sure what their true meaning is, and remaining an ultimately confusing experience, such as Netflix’s Triple Frontier.
The film follows a military advisor in Colmobia nicknamed Pope (Oscar Isaac), who is approached by an informant to smuggle her and her brother out of the country in exchange for information on a drug lord named Lorea. Learning that Lorea lives in a safe house with all of his cash, Pope enlists the help of his old Delta Force friends to help seize the money, including Redly (Ben Affleck), Ironed (Charlie Hunnam), Benny (Garrett Hedlund), and Catfish (Pedro Pascal). Once the group infiltrates Lorea’s home, they find themselves with much more money than they expected and an unexpectedly long journey ahead of them to escape Colombia.
The film deals a lot with the subject of greed, as Redfly, the morally righteous and calculated leader of the group, finds himself overcome by the severe amount of money that they find once they infiltrate Lorea’s house. A point is made that Redfly never misses a predetermined time that he sets for himself in order to properly escape a scenario, and here he finds himself quickly contradicting that once he sees just how much Lorea has hidden. Many of the decisions that are made are constantly driven by the stolen money, and the film seems to be looking to teach a lesson on what happens when money and materialism consume someone.
Though the film suddenly shifts gears as it goes into the final act, and suddenly turns into a redemption tale that just doesn’t feel earned. Characters find themselves having abrupt changes of heart, contradicting many of the things they said earlier on in the film, and the film never addressing many of the themes it originally addressed. The film seems like it was meant to make its characters morally ambiguous but completely misses the mark. The film would have benefited if they all suffered from some repeated internal conflict rather than just having a change of heart that never feels fully explained.
The film essentially has two conflicting messages that both make for the subject of a great movie, but don’t seem to blend in well together here, only being able to convey one or another at a time. And what’s frustrating is how unsubtle it can be in each of these moments. The dialogue is often subpar, with characters talking down to one another or repeating many of the same statement over and over again. The way the characters speak to one another, it often feels like what middle-schoolers would imagine how adults would talk to one another, rather than how actual expertly-trained military professionals would speak to each other.
If there’s anything that makes the dialogue a little less cringe-worthy, it’s the performances from its five main leads. While they all don’t have the greatest material to work with, Affleck, Isaac, and the rest of the crew do make the most of what they have, and make the movie fairly tolerable for the most part. What’s at least comforting is that it’s actually really easy to buy all five of these people as friends. They all have pretty solid chemistry, and bounce off each other quite well. The performances mixed with the dialogue feels almost as contradictory as the move itself, as they all give pretty convincing performances, even if the dialogue itself is hard to swallow. When each of them speak, they do speak with a great deal of conviction, and the moments where they get to have a quick laugh with one another are probably the closest thing to natural portrayed in the movie.
If there’s one other big positive in the movie, it’s the action. If there’s one thing this movie does get right, it’s the fact that it offers some pretty high-intensity thrills. The heist scene in which the crew take Lorea’s money is easily the film’s best moment. This moment moves at an incredibly fast pace, and does contain some great editing, especially when it comes down to the wire and it cuts back and forth to outside the house. Many of the scenes that occur after the heist are also particularly well-done, including a tense negotiation scene in a farm village as well as a gripping standoff that takes place on a mountain. Moments such as these do somehow manage to keep audiences lured in and are rewarding for those who can withstand the movie’s faults.
Triple Frontier is a film that’s not sure what it wants to be. It goes in two different directions and manages to be extremely preachy in regards to the conflicting messages it sends about materialism and redemption. The film manages to be entertaining, with some great action scenes and convincing performances from its five main leads that are enough to keep an audience tuned in till the end. Unfortunately, the film’s confused morals and preachy dialogue tend to hold it back from being something truly greater than it thinks it is.
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