Triple Frontier (I still don’t understand the title) is a military-style heist movie with an impressive cast.  Reminds me of the 1999 Gulf War film Three Kings with George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg and Ice Cube.  A group of soldiers decide that stealing from bad guys isn’t really stealing.  That they should be paid for their time served and their sacrifices from the millions of dollars that their enemies have socked away. While Three Kings is an action-adventure with comedy movie, Triple Frontier is more of a drama with some action sprinkled throughout.

Triple Frontier has a good set up and general direction from the start.  We are introduced to Charlie Hunnam, Oscar Isaac, and Ben Affleck in their lives after their military careers have ended.  Then Oscar has a plan.  A plan to set them all up for life.  When you listen to how they rationalize their involvement in the heist, it is hard to believe that this type of thing doesn’t happen often in real life.  Men with a particular set of skills, who have a network of informants and contacts, who feel cast aside by society choose to go hunt down bad guys and take their money. Makes perfect sense to me.

It is during the second half that Triple Frontier started to unravel.  Questionable decisions are made by both the characters in the movie and by the writers who wrote it.  Triple Frontier more than most movies in the genre, could have greatly benefited by Netflix new gimmick of Choose Your Own Adventure.  Almost exactly 1 hour into the movie, you should get three options of what the crew should do.  Do you continue down the path of poor choices that we saw in the movie or do you make a different decision and make this one of the best movies of the year?  The choice is yours!

Even with it’s flaws, Triple Frontier is a big step forward for Netflix movies.  Big names, big budget, solid directing. I am looking forward to where they go from here.