Mark Reviews Movies: TRIPLE FRONTIER

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 6, 2019

Director J.C. Chandor and Mark Boal's screenplay doesn't open Triple Frontier with the obvious scene. The film's second scene would be the more obvious opening. It's an elaborate action setpiece, featuring a helicopter carrying one of our five protagonists into a South American city as heavy metal blasts on the soundtrack through the character's headphones.

He's on his way to a raid on a local drug gang's hideouts, and the action sequence that follows offers plenty of gunfire, explosions, and death. It also provides some other details, such as our man handing the rifle he used to kill a bunch of gang members to a local cop, in order to provide the minimal amount of plausible deniability about his involvement in the raid, and the execution-style killings of the survivors.

For that second moment, Chandor's camera remains on Santiago "Pope" Garcia's (Oscar Isaac) face as the fatal gunshots pop and the desperate cries of one man echo throughout the remains of the building. It's a face that knows what's coming to these men, but it's not one that's resigned to or takes any satisfaction in the inevitable. This is a man who has seen death and, if possible, would prefer not to see any more of it. That's pretty much impossible in his line of work, a mercenary for an unnamed company that gets involved in such internal foreign disputes for profit. If Pope could do anything else with his career, maybe he would, but that's not a luxury he can consider, given the circumstances of his life.

The film's first scene is the one that sets up this internal conflict, which is shared by the other four characters who make up the rest of the central team, who return to South America to seek justice and money—with the latter being the more important thing for almost all of them. That scene has William "Ironhead" Miller (Charlie Hunnam) giving a speech to a room filled with soldiers whose enlistments are coming an end. He has since moved into the private sector—"suckered into" it, he says. The thesis of his speech pretty much amounts to the notion that, since these soldiers have already seen and done a lot of things that might haunt them for the rest of their lives, they might as well stay in the military to make that change mean something.

In case it isn't apparent yet, this is a very cynical film, but it's a pragmatic kind of cynicism. It doesn't judge its characters on a simple moral level, because, from the start, it recognizes that they are broken men. They're incapable of adjusting to normal life, because they resent what combat has done to them but also know that, now, it is the only thing that can give their lives any meaning.

Pope is still in the muck of battle, although he has become jaded—believing that he could help the people of a struggling country, only to see it become worse. William wishes he could go back but can only tell others about his mistake. William's brother Ben (Garrett Hedlund) has become a mixed martial arts fighter, whose real talents, the brother says, are being wasted on unappreciative audiences. Francisco "Catfish" Morales was once an ace pilot, but post-military life has led to a series of decisions that mean he isn't legally allowed to fly anymore. The group's former leader Tom "Redfly" Davis (Ben Affleck), meanwhile, has tried the most to distance himself from his former life and get himself a boring, ordinary civilian living. He has a broken marriage, a distant daughter, bills for two households, and a failing real-estate career to show for his humble aspirations.

Pope comes back home with an offer for his friends and fellow veterans. In preparation for a planned raid, his company will pay them to surveil the home of Lorea (Reynaldo Gallegos), a drug cartel leader with a fortress of an estate in the woods of Brazil, near that country's borders with Paraguay and Argentina. When they arrive, though, Pope reveals that he has always had another plan in mind: to kill Lorea with his pals and take as much money as they can from him. There is at least $70 million in the house.

This story seems to be a promise of a certain amount of action, but Chandor and Boal are far more interested in the toll of that violence, which is presented here as sudden, desperate, and leading to consequences that might not be known for some time. The film isn't quite a character study, since its protagonists are too broad to qualify as more than basic types, but it is a study of remorse, resentment, and greed, as well as how—at least in the minds of these men—violence, to one degree or another, is the only answer to the emptiness they're feeling. Of the quintet, Pope seems the most decent, although even his answer to the noble goal of protecting others is murder (which inevitably leads to more killing). Tom is the most complex of the bunch—a man who's hesitant to join the job but finds killing a little too easy once he's back to it.

The story follows the men stealing and, then, trying to get the large haul of cash to a boat on the other side of the Andes. Complications mount and multiply, but Triple Frontier remains invested in how these characters react to them and what those decisions mean about a life lived in and defined by violence.

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