Review: J.C. Chandor delivers another remarkably succinct heist drama with Triple Frontier – with a cast about as strong as one can possibly get. Oscar Isaac and Ben Affleck lead a team of former special ops soldiers into South America to retrieve a large sum of money, and the events spiral from there. Chandor’s 2019 film stands among the best action movies of the late-2010s.
Triple Frontier is an old school thriller that we desperately need more often nowadays. J.C. Chandor has become one of the champion filmmaker’s for adult dramas with big time movie stars (A Most Violent Year with Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain, and Margin Call with Kevin Spacey and Jeremy Irons). This is perhaps his most accomplished work yet, and certainly his most ambitious.
Triple Frontier follows five former special ops soldiers struggling to make ends meet. Among them are the brains of the operation Pope (Oscar Isaac), Redfly (Ben Affleck), Ironhead (Charlie Hunnam), Benny (Garrett Hedlund), and Catfish (Pedro Pascal). Each of the five actors’ macho charisma works universally, and the five of them being in a movie together in 2019 ages so well every year since.
The film features a handful of big turns that ultimately add up to a worthwhile viewing. The pacing becomes an oddity as Triple Frontier has to reinvent itself on the fly frequently as things go awry for the crew, but it never becomes unengaging. The group of soldiers acquire the money from the heist of a drug lord early on, and it catches you off-guard considering there’s still another hour left in the runtime as its happening.
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But Triple Frontier holds your attention because of the large-scale set design and big action set pieces. Chandor squeezes every ounce out of the movie’s $115 million budget, and that fact that it was a Netflix product released exclusively on streaming services at home is a big bummer – this would’ve played so much better in a thunderous movie theater.
At the time of writing this, J.C. Chandor’s next movie is Kraven the Hunter for the Sony Spider-Man Universe. Considering the significantly uninspiring results of the previous movies in this universe, I’m less than excited that Chandor is being pulled into franchise filmmaking instead of continuing the push to make thrilling dramas with real stakes and stories. Here’s to hoping he returns to films with a similar tone and ambition to Triple Frontier, which certifiably rules and is among the best thrillers in the late 2010s.
Genre: Action, Crime, Drama, Thriller
Watch Triple Frontier (2019) on Netflix
Triple Frontier Movie Cast and Credits
Cast
Oscar Isaac as Pope
Ben Affleck as Redfly
Charlie Hunnam as Ironhead
Garrett Hedlund as Benny
Pedro Pascal as Catfish
Adria Arjona as Yovanna
Crew
Director: J.C. Chandor
Writers: Mark Boal, J.C. Chandor
Cinematography: Roman Vasyanov
Editor: Ron Patane
Composer: Rich Vreeland
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