TRIPLE FRONTIER (US - 2019) Directed by J.C. Chandor. Written by Mark Boal and J.C. Chandor. Cast: Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam, Garrett Hedlund, Pedro Pascal, Adria Arjona, Rey Gallegos, Louis Jeovanny, Juan Camilo Castillo, Sheila Vand, Madeline "Maddy" Wary. (R, 125 mins) In various stages of development since 2010, Netflix's drug cartel heist thriller TRIPLE FRONTIER was originally set to be director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal's follow-up to their Oscar-winning THE HURT LOCKER, with stars like Tom Hanks, Johnny Depp, Will Smith, Channing Tatum, Tom Hardy, Ben Affleck, Casey Affleck, and Mark Wahlberg all in talks or attached to make up the ensemble cast at different points along the way. By the time the film went into production in early 2018, only Ben Affleck remained as Bigelow and Boal were out, though both are listed as co-producers, and Boal shares screenwriting credit with eventual director J.C. Chandor, who established himself as a promising new filmmaker with the riveting financial crisis autopsy MARGIN CALL, the Robert Redford-starring ALL IS LOST, and the throwback Sidney Lumet-style NYC crime and corruption of A MOST VIOLENT YEAR. Chandor seems an odd choice for a big-budget actioner like this (and seeing the finished product, it's a little difficult to picture Tom Hanks starring), but it finds its bearings after a shaky opening act that, with dialogue like "That's the price of being a warrior" and needle-drops by Metallica and Pantera, seems dangerously close to venturing down the same path as the meat-headed, barbed-wire-tatted bicep brosploitation of 2014's mouth-breathing SABOTAGE, a fuckin' wicked sick fuckin' work-hard/play-hard fuckin' X-Treme energy drink disguised as an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.
Pope (Oscar Isaac) is ex-Special Forces now earning a living as a military contractor. He's been after South American drug lord Lorea (Rey Gallegos) for several years and has an inside informant with his lover Yovanna (Adria Arjona), who handles Lorea's books. Pope wants to nail Lorea but he has other plans, namely getting his hands on his money, which Lorea keeps at his heavily-guarded Brazilian fortress. Hatching a plan that's dangerous and very off-the-books, Pope recruits four of his former Special Forces badass buddies to go along on a fact-finding recon mission to hopefully talk them into raiding the compound, wiping out Lorea and his army, and making off with his estimated $75 million fortune that's kept somewhere on the premises. There's Redfly (Ben Affleck), now a divorced dad and unsuccessful real estate agent; disgraced pilot Catfish (Pedro Pascal), who's been making ends meet as a coke trafficker; Ironhead (Charlie Hunnam), who's taken his PTSD anger-management issues and found work as a motivational speaker for the newly-enlisted; and Ironhead's nickname-less little brother Ben (Garrett Hedlund), now an MMA fighter with a losing record. None of these guys are happy with the current state of their lives and only feel at home in combat, so of course they'll hesitate at first but eventually agree. Before you know it, they're crossing the border into Brazil to the tune of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Run Through the Jungle," without question the most overused classic rock song in commercial cinema today. I don't have scientific evidence, but I watch a shit-ton of movies and I see a lot of montages with a lot of familiar needle-drops, and I can say with certainty that I didn't hear the Fabulous Thunderbirds' "Tuff Enuff" in the mid-1980s as much as I've heard goddamn "Run Through the Jungle" in the latter half of the 2010s.
That's about 30 minutes in, and honestly, I was getting a little irritated with TRIPLE FRONTIER. Fortunately, it improves quite a bit, particularly with the botched escape from Lorea's fortress, where the money is hidden in the walls, and the eventual issues they have transporting it to their rendezvous point, which requires them to fly over the Andes in a military chopper that can't handle the weight of the cargo since the presumed $75 million is actually closer to $250 million. This forces them to resort to drastic measures--from ditching some of the money to finding alternate modes of transport--that turn TRIPLE FRONTIER into a sort-of FITZCARRALDO reimagined as a heist/survivalist adventure. The characters themselves are rather two-dimensional, though it does go for an unpredictable choice as to who the hair-trigger fuck-up among them will be that causes an already dangerous situation to get exponentially worse. Aside from a dodgy-looking CGI chopper crash, TRIPLE FRONTIER, shot on Oahu and in Colombia, is fairly suspenseful and solid entertainment that's certainly worth a stream, even if runs a tad longish at just past two hours.
THE EQUALIZER 2 (US - 2018) Directed by Antoine Fuqua. Written by Richard Wenk. Cast: Denzel Washington, Pedro Pascal, Melissa Leo, Bill Pullman, Ashton Sanders, Orson Bean, Jonathan Scarfe, Sakina Jaffrey, Kazy Tauginas, Garrett A. Golden. (R, 122 mins) In the first sequel of his nearly 40-year career, the great Denzel Washington again demonstrates enough intensity and steely gravitas to elevate a routine and generic revenge actioner to slightly above average entertainment. Loosely based on the fondly-remembered 1985-89 CBS series THE EQUALIZER, the big-screen franchise--please don't call the next one THE 3QUALIZER--is the fourth teaming of Washington with his TRAINING DAY director Antoine Fuqua, and only slightly retains the premise of retired CIA agent Robert McCall (played by Edward Woodward in the series) offering his services to those in trouble and with nowhere else to turn. With Washington's interpretation of the character already established, the sequel is really just a high-end version of the kind of vigilante movies Charles Bronson would crank out for Cannon in the 1980s. Globetrotting from Istanbul to Brussels to D.C. to Boston, it does give Washington's McCall, a widower who leads a solitary existence and drives a Lyft part-time (he was apparently let go from his Home Depot job after the last film's in-store nail-gun and powertool bloodbath), a chance to help a few people in need: a young girl taken from her mother to her Turkish father's homeland; artistically-gifted teen Miles (MOONLIGHT's Ashton Sanders), who lives in his Boston apartment complex and is tempted by gang life; and elderly Holocaust survivor Sam Rubinstein (Orson Bean sighting!), who's spent his life unsuccessfully searching for both a stolen painting and his younger sister after they were separated as kids and sent to different concentration camps.
Of course, these subplots that most resemble the Woodward series are secondary to the crux of THE EQUALIZER 2, which has McCall investigating the murder of his former CIA boss Susan Plummer (Melissa Leo) in Brussels where she was working with Interpol on a husband/wife murder-suicide that looks staged (because it was) and may have agency ties (SPOILER: it does). McCall seeks out the help of his former partner Dave York (Pedro Pascal), who's understandably shocked to learn that he faked his own death years earlier with the assistance of Plummer. McCall does some snooping on his own, which leads to an attempt on his life by a hired killer under the guise of a Lyft passenger in a nicely-done action sequence. Plummer was obviously about to blow the doors off of something big, and the truth could be--wait for it--closer than McCall realizes.
There's very little in the way of surprises in the cookie-cutter script by mercenary screenwriter Richard Wenk (THE MECHANIC, THE EXPENDABLES 2, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN), and even less in logic in some spots, especially with a climax that's essentially HIGH NOON in a hurricane in an evacuated seaside town. McCall's superhero-like Spidey Sense is one thing, but it's truly amazing how he arrived just as the storm was reaching peak strength with the bad guys very close behind, yet he still had time to plaster a stack of Melissa Leo headshots all over the place with which to taunt the killers as they search for him (also, on the way there, he had Brennan's husband, played by Bill Pullman, riding shotgun but lost him somewhere because he just disappears from both McCall's car and the movie). Like its predecessor, THE EQUALIZER 2 is harmless, brainless action fare, though it tones down the over-the-top gore until the climax, when McCall commences the throat slashings, disembowelings, and eye-gougings. It exists for no other reason than to solidify 63-year-old Washington's place in the post-TAKEN geriatric action scene (though Washington looks younger than his age, it's interesting to note how much older Woodward seemed on the TV series, which ended when the veteran British actor was just 59) and to serve as content on streaming and cable in perpetuity by this time next year. Even when he makes a bad movie--VIRTUOSITY and the terrible remake of THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123--Washington is incapable of phoning it in and going through the motions. He has some good moments here and seems to be enjoying himself, even showing some of the TRAINING DAY edginess in a few spots and putting forth more effort than you'd see from a lot of his contemporaries. It's dumb, it's reasonably entertaining, and you won't remember any of it by the time you get to the parking lot. It's a summer movie.
