Movie Review: Triple Frontier

credit: Triple Frontier

Netflix has been on a hit-or-miss run for a while now since they started pumping out their own material, and Triple Frontier is one of those that feels like it hit more than it missed. When trying to break it down into a couple of pertinent sentences, it’s not too difficult, but the overall feel of the story is something that people can’t help but think is a little too simple if they really think about it. In other words, Santiago, the former soldier, has an idea to steal from a drug lord and eliminate the man at the same time, utilizing the help of his friends, who are all former soldiers, and who all need a payday. The word from Santiago’s informant, who he chases through a sprawling village before learning that Lorea has around $75 million stashed in his home, which is his own private safe. Upon returning to the US to round up his friends, it becomes obvious that each one of them is in need of something, be it money or action, since their lives have turned out to be a great deal less interesting than they had hoped. 

credit: Triple Frontier

The mission sounds like a thing of ease to specialists that know what they’re doing. 

Hearing how Santiago and the others have planned the mission makes one think that they’ll be able to head in, do their business, and then head out without any trouble. But in a movie like this, there’s always trouble since there are always unforeseen circumstances that occur for one reason or another. It could be a variable that can’t be factored in with one hundred percent certainty, or it could be something that was missed even though everything was figured out down to the wire. Movies like this don’t tend to go off without a hitch since otherwise, they’d be very short and not quite as entertaining as they need to be in order to draw an audience. Plus, having a few big stars in the mix doesn’t hurt, either. 

A lot of movies tend to suffer when big names and big egos clash over the direction of the story. 

That didn’t appear to happen this time since even if there was beef behind the scenes, it appears that Ben Affleck, Pedro Pascal, Charlie Hunnam, Garrett Hedlund, and Oscar Isaac have enough chemistry to work together in order to turn in an exciting movie. Things do feel tense when it comes to Lorea’s house being hit, but given that this is a tense situation in the story thanks to a narrow escape window, it feels that this was only natural, and the guys did exactly what they were supposed to do. Unfortunately, when it was discovered that there was more than $75 million in the walls and that the entire house was filled with money behind the drywall and plaster, the guys did what might have been expected of them, and they tried to get it all, or as much of it as they could. The greed that was bound to bring them down was easy to predict since money has a way of doing things to people, no matter how good or bad they are, that usually isn’t bound to make a situation better. 

credit: Triple Frontier

There was one death that was kind of unexpected, but it was unfortunately justified as well. 

It was kind of easy to think that not all of them were going to make it out, especially since they were in hostile territory without backup and without support from their country since this was a job that would have been condemned by pretty much everyone. Not only that but being seen by Lorea’s family on the way out didn’t help the group since Lorea’s men had time to mobilize and even talk to allies that would bolster their numbers. Then there’s the issue of the weight of the money, which made it impossible for the guys to clear the mountain range that they needed to pass over on the way to their evac point at the coastline. Crashing down in the middle of a farm wasn’t optimal, but killing those that were set on attacking them was worse since it created a vendetta that led to the death of one of them as he was taken out by the relative of a man he shot. 

While they did manage to make it back, the trip was more or less a successful failure. 

That sounds odd, doesn’t it? But the point is that the group did lose a man, and the majority of the money, which constitutes a pretty big failure. But they did make it home alive, and they did the right thing by leaving the entirety of the money they did recover to their fallen friend’s family. In a big way, they succeeded in keeping their lives and taking care of those who needed the money, but otherwise, they failed to achieve their overall objective. 

It was a fun action movie; that much is easy to say.