Time: 125 Minutes
Cast:
Ben Affleck as Tom “Redfly” Davis
Oscar Isaac as Santiago “Pope” Garcia
Charlie Hunnam as William “Ironhead” Miller
Garrett Hedlund as Ben Miller
Pedro Pascal as Francisco “Catfish” Morales
Adria Arjona as Yovanna
Director: J. C. Chandor

Former Special Forces operatives reunite to plan a heist in a sparsely populated multi-border zone of South America. For the first time in their prestigious careers, these unsung heroes undertake this dangerous mission for themselves instead of the country. But when events take an unexpected turn and threaten to spiral out of control, their skills, their loyalties, and their morals are pushed to a breaking point in an epic battle for survival.

Triple Frontier was one of my anticipated movies of 2019. While there are plenty of heist movies, what made it stand apart from the others was a very talented main cast, with the likes of Oscar Isaac and Ben Affleck among them. I honestly didn’t know what to expect from it outside of that, but I was more than satisfied and entertained with the end result.

Triple Frontier is a straightforward heist movie, and at around 2 hours it had me interested for the entire runtime. The whole movie isn’t just about the heist, it’s the heist and then everything following the heist. As that, I was engaged in the plot and characters, especially as they kept being thrown into dire situations. Some people said that the movie kind of dropped off towards the second half, especially in terms of pacing. I didn’t feel that personally, I was pretty riveted throughout the entirety of the movie. Honestly my issue with the pacing was in the early parts of the movie, as it felt a little rushed as it was trying to establish all the characters. I guess the last action sections of the movie felt a tad underwhelming in comparison to those before it but that’s it, I was also fine with the direction the story was going in. The movie at the end leaves room open for a sequel, even though I wouldn’t mind seeing a follow up to Triple Frontier, I’m pretty sure we don’t really need one.

The cast was one of the biggest selling points, with the 5 leads Oscar Isaac, Ben Affleck, Charlie Hunnam, Garrett Hedlund and Pedro Pascal, and they certainly delivered. You can tell throughout that this film is heavily relying on the characters and their actors to elevate the movie above just being another heist movie, thankfully they did. Their chemistry together is really believable, the film doesn’t even have to delve into too much detail about their backstories together because they just work so well off each other. Oscar Isaac (who is pretty much the main lead of the movie) leads the other characters very well, Ben Affleck surprises quite a bit with his performance here, and the rest of the cast as usual play their parts greatly.

J.C. Chandor has done some good work with his direction with All Is Lost and A Most Violent Year. His work on Triple Frontier was good as well, with it being a really great looking movie, it’s really shot well by Roman Vasyanov. It really places you with these characters and the places they go. The action scenes are also solid, they aren’t particularly stand out and aren’t anything that we haven’t seen before, but nonetheless were good enough for what they needed to be. The score by Disasterpiece is also very effective.

Triple Frontier is entertaining, thrilling and well directed, with the great work from the talented main cast being the highlight. While it has some issues, Triple Frontier is one of the better movies that Netflix has put out and is one of the more stand out heist movies in recent years, definitely worth a watch when you get a chance.