A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Tuesday, September 20, 2022

Triple Frontier (J.C. Chandor, 2019)

 













Cast: Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam, Garrett Hedlund, Pedro Pascal, Adria Arjona. Screenplay: Mark Boal, J.C. Chandor. Cinematography: Roman Vasyanov. Production design: Greg Berry. Film editing: Ron Patane. Music: Disasterpeace. 

Mark Boal’s screenplay for Triple Frontier was kicked around for several years before it was finally made. Originally planned to be directed by Kathryn Bigelow, who directed Boal’s Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker and Oscar-nominated Zero Dark Thirty scripts, it was going to star Tom Hanks and Johnny Depp. When that fell through, other directors and other stars were talked about, including Channing Tatum, Mark Wahlberg, Will Smith, and Mahershala Ali. That it wound up starring Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam, Garrett Hedlund, and Pedro Pascal is a pretty good indication that filmmakers now have a solid roster of male actors to call on. All that cast shuffling and script massaging may have taken a little toll on the final product, which is a pretty good movie that doesn’t quite have the kinetic charge it needs. The story is about five veterans of the Special Forces who get together to assassinate a South American drug lord and steal the millions he has stashed away. The triple frontier of the title is the Tres Fronteras area where Brazil, Peru, and Colombia come together. The five men have all fallen on hard times after leaving the military. Affleck’s character, nicknamed “Redfly,” the former leader of the group, is trying to make a living selling real estate and struggling with a failed marriage. “Ironhead” (Hunnam) ekes out a living making motivational speeches to new recruits. His brother, Ben (Hedlund), gets a battering as a cage fighter. “Catfish” (Pascal) is a pilot whose license has been suspended because the plane he was hired to fly was loaded with cocaine. Only “Pope” (Isaac) still has military ties: He’s a hired gun for law enforcement organizations. With such varied backstories, the characters in Triple Frontier ought to be more involving, especially when their plan initially succeeds but then falls apart in a grueling attempt to haul the cash they scavenge across the Andes to their escape vessel. There are echoes of much better movies in this one, such as The Wages of Fear (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1953) and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston, 1948). But Triple Frontier, despite the hard work of its fine cast, seems muddled – and even, dare I say, muddied by the gloomycam cinematography.