Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 5/10

Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kate Winslet, Woody Harrelson, Anthony Mackie, Clifton Collins Jr., Casey Affleck, Gal Gadot, Teresa Palmer, Aaron Paul, Norman Reedus, Michael Kenneth Williams, Michelle Ang, Luis Da Silva Jr.

Corruption is one in which no one can truly escape unless they have found a way to shelter from the storm of everyday and the lure of greed and fear; everybody has a weakness, everybody has a secret in which they can be pushed to the point of crossing their own line of decency. It is a decency that unfortunately is missing in the film Triple 9.

Triple 9 is a film that knows it should be more than the sum of its parts allows for, that it had all the basic ingredients to make it worthwhile, to perhaps even be lauded for its look at the culture of corruption and dishonesty that easily slips into the everyday world and makes the line between trust and deceit become blurred and distorted. Instead what the viewer is offered is a muddle, an unclear film that strives to be looked upon a top shelf beauty but instead one that commits celluloid suicide by insisting that the plot is pure and incorruptible.

There are not that many films in which both Chiwetel Ejiofor and Kate Winslet are completely miscast within, in fact both actors are normally found harbouring roles of integrity and honour, yet somehow these two British greats are left floundering in roles that have let them down, that have taken a certain shine of recent positions within the cinematic community. It is a shame that this has happened to both actors but they are not the only ones to be tainted by the lax atmosphere and crude thought within the film as Woody Harrelson, normally a man of impeccable ability, is reduced to a part in which you almost wish that they had cut out.

If there is an actor that does come out of the film with their reputation intact, then it falls to Clifton Collins Jr. as Jorge Rodriguez to hold the interest of the cinema goer; gritty, realistic and full of authority, Mr. Collins shines in an otherwise drab casting affair.

Whilst the story line is one that the audience would surely wish to admire, the sense of everybody being used to another end and the fine line in which a person’s moral guide can be moved, it falls short in the end and it is only due to the idea as whole in which denies the viewer the opportunity to find total and complete fault with Triple 9.

Ian D. Hall