Today I had no idea what show or movie I wanted to write about. I had a few ideas but I figured I would sift through my streaming services and see if anything caught my attention. Netflix made it easy for me, because as soon as it booted up, a trailer for this movie started playing automatically. My first thought was, “Wow, what a cast!” My second thought was, “Dang…it’s a Netflix Original Film.” In my opinion, Netflix Originals can be very hit or miss, but with a cast and trailer like that I decided I would give it a shot!
First of all, the soundtrack is top notch. I know most of you appreciate a good selection of music throughout this film, and Triple Frontier doesn’t disappoint. Second, it starts out as your classic “getting the band back together” military movie, and those are always interesting. Santiago, played by Oscar Isaac gets his old Special Forces buddies back together for one more mission. The plan is to take down a drug lord in South America and steal his 35+ million dollars, which they get to keep 25% of. After some recon and group discussion they decide they will do the mission solo and keep 100% of the money. Just like most military and heist movies, things are never as easy as they hope it to be. Any movie fan will tell you that when things are going really well, that only means that all hell is going to break loose eventually. Due to some extra greediness, the original plan gets altered and everything gets much more difficult.
One would think after watching the trailer that this movie was going to have lots of shootouts and a very Lone Survivor sort of vibe. Sure it has a few, but most of the time you’re just watching these men deal with internal and psychological struggle. They definitely have different moral compasses and when each of them come across certain obstacles they don’t always agree. They all treat each other like brothers, and anyone with a brother knows that sometimes you just do not get along no matter how much you care for each other.
I was excited to watch this one, but I’ll be honest, I expected better. That doesn’t mean it’s not a good movie. The camera work is great during action scenes, so you don’t feel dizzy or nauseous, (which is an issue I have had with some movies.) The level of acting was very refreshing, because most of the Netflix Originals that I’ve watched tend to have one good actor and a bunch of cheesy ones. That being said, I think this movie’s run time should have been about 1:30:00 but they dragged it out for another half hour. I don’t mind watching a two-hour movie, but with a cast like this I just expected a solid monologue from each so I could get some backstory. I guess we don’t need to know much about each character’s personal life, but I tend to get emotionally invested so I wanted to know more! I don’t know…I just felt very unsatisfied at the end.
Report Card: 6.5/10
Great idea. Military movie meets heist movie, meets survival movie; just poorly executed in my opinion. The characters had little depth, so I found it hard to root for them at times. Maybe development was rushed, but I feel like this movie could’ve been so much better. I guess the characters and the movie studios were looking for a quick payday and a vacation in South America. You don’t need to rush to see this one, but it’s worth a watch eventually.
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