Mountain Views News          Saturday, March 5, 2016

12

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Mountain Views-News Saturday, March 5, 2016 


On the Marquee: Notes from the Sierra Madre Playhouse

SEAN’S SHAMELESS 

REVIEWS:

‘TRIPLE 9’ COMBINES GRIM ACTION 
WITH MURKY PLOT 

By Sean Kayden


“Triple 9” features a star-studded cast in this grimy and 
murky crime-thriller from first time screenwriter and 
former military soldier Matt Cook. John Hillcoat (“The 
Road,” “The Proposition,” “Lawless”) helmed the film 
about cops/ex-military that partake in criminal activities. 
“Triple 9” includes Chiwetel Ejiofor, Aaron Paul, and 
Norman Reedus as Iraq veterans and Anthony Mackie 
and Clifton Collins Jr. as cops that pull off a heist in the 
beginning of the film. Kate Winslet plays Irina Vlaslov, a 
Jewish Russian mob leader that the criminals work under. 
In fact, the only one that has any relation to her is Ejiofor’s 
character, Michael Atwood. He has a son with Vlaslov’s 
younger sister (Gal Gadot) and is forced to do these 
jobs-for-hire in order to see his son. It’s unclear to why 
these other cops/former soldiers even help out Atwood 
after not getting paid once the first heist goes down. The 
searing action gets you hooked from the beginning, but 
“Triple 9” does fall into crime caper tropes along the path 
it heads down. 

Director: John Hillcoat

Screenwriter: Matt Cook

Rated R for strong violence and language throughout, 
drug use and some nudity

Release Date: February 26th, 2016

 Woody Harrelson plays veteran detective Jeffery Allen, 
who has clearly seen it all. He brings his nephew played 
by Casey Affleck up the ranks into the department where 
Anthony Mackie’s character is in. The two cops are forced 
to partner up despite Mackie’s initial refusal. Casey 
Affleck is the only “good” cop to be found here, but you 
never get a true sense of what is character really wants. 
He has a wife, but those scenes quickly pass on by without 
much substance to hold them together. It is as if his 
character only exists because you need someone to root 
for, someone with a moral compass. Sure, the criminals 
led by Chietwel Ejiofor’s character are great, but I wish we 
had more of grasp of whom these guys are. Speaking of 
that, I was hoping Aaron Paul had more to work with, but 
he does his best in the constricted character he portrays. 
It’s never revealed to why Anthony Mackie’s character is 
involved with these soldiers or how they got together. The 
audience just has to believe he is in it only for the money 
as well. Bizarrely, but no one really gets worked up that 
much about not being paid for the first job they do. They 
have to do one more “impossible” job in order to get paid. 
Anthony Mackie and Clifton Collins Jr. suggest a “999” in 
order to have more time to pull off the “last job”. A triple 
9 refers to a fellow police officer going down in the line of 
fire and all units converging to the scene at once. Mackie 
has someone in mind and of course it’s good guy/his new 
partner, Casey Affleck. 

 “Triple 9” reminds me that you can stack up a movie 
with an exceptional cast and solid action sequences, but 
if the plot is convoluted and uninspiring, then there will 
be problems. While the movie is entertaining because of 
its cast, you can’t ignore the clichés such as the last job 
setup, the ruthless mob boss with vague details on the files 
that are needed, and a character having second thoughts 
of committing the murder in order to pull off the final 
heist. The script from Matt Cook is definitely inspired 
by filmmakers like David Ayer or Michael Mann films. 
For the most part, that’s good company to be associated 
with. However, despite good action, a fun cast, and 
eruptions of sadistic violence, it’s nothing new to the tired 
and true crime thriller. While the first half of the movie 
proved to be going in the right direction, what “Triple 
9” undergoes through the later half is fairly common 
with an ambiguous plot to boot. An abrupt and slightly 
befuddling ending (last shot) is also disappointing, which 
I was hoping was going to relieve some of the ailments 
along the way. If you’re a fan of crime/genre thrillers, 
you’ll still find “Triple 9” to be entertaining. Just don’t 
over overplay your expectations or else total let down will 
unfortunately become your final result.

Grade: 3 out of 5

Jeff’s Book Pics By Jeff Brown

The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing 
Who You Are by Alan Watts 

At the root of human conflict is our fundamental 
misunderstanding of who we are. The illusion 
that we are isolated beings, unconnected to 
the rest of the universe, has led us to view the 
“outside” world with hostility, 
and has fueled our misuse of 
technology and our violent and 
hostile subjugation of the natural 
world. In The Book, philosopher 
Alan Watts provides us with 
a much-needed answer to the 
problem of personal identity, 
distilling and adapting the 
ancient Hindu philosophy of 
Vedanta to help us understand 
that the self is in fact the root and 
ground of the universe. In this 
mind-opening and revelatory 
work, Watts has crafted a primer 
on what it means to be human—
and a manual of initiation into 
the central mystery of existence.


Last Bus to Wisdom: A Novel 
by Ivan Doig

Named a Best Book of the 
Year by the Seattle Times, San 
Francisco Chronicle, and Kirkus 
Review.The final novel from 
a great American storyteller.
Donal Cameron is being raised 
by his grandmother, the cook 
at the legendary Double W 
ranch in Ivan Doig’s beloved 
Two Medicine Country of the 
Montana Rockies, a landscape 
that gives full rein to an eleven-
year-old’s imagination. But 
when Gram has to have surgery 
for “female trouble” in the 
summer of 1951, all she can 
think to do is to ship Donal off to 
her sister in faraway Manitowoc, 
Wisconsin. There Donal is in for 
a rude surprise: Aunt Kate–bossy, opinionated, 
argumentative, and tyrannical—is nothing 
like her sister. She henpecks her good-natured 
husband, Herman the German, and Donal 
can’t seem to get on her good side either. After 
one contretemps too many, Kate packs him 
back to the authorities in Montana on the next 
Greyhound. But as it turns out, Donal isn’t 
traveling solo: Herman the German has decided 
to fly the coop with him. In the immortal 
American tradition, the pair light out for the 
territory together, meeting a classic Doigian 
ensemble of characters and having rollicking 
misadventures along the way.Charming, wise, 
and slyly funny, Last Bus to Wisdom is a last 
sweet gift from a writer whose 
books have bestowed untold 
pleasure on countless readers. 


Death in Bordeaux by Allan 
Massie

In the spring of 1940, the 
mutilated body of a gay male is 
discovered in a street near the 
Bordeaux railway station. It looks 
like a straight-forward sex crime, 
but when Superintendent Lannes 
is warned off the investigation, 
his suspicion that there is a 
political motive for the murder 
seems justified. In defiance of 
authority, he continues working 
on the case. And then another 
body is found...Meanwhile, 
the Superintendent has other 
troubles. His eldest son, 
Dominique, is at the Front, his 
wife, Marguerite, is depressed, 
and when the Battle of France 
breaks out, Bordeaux is filled 
with refugees fleeing the war. 
Suddenly civilian crime seems 
of little importance compared 
to the chaos that ensues. As 
Bordeaux becomes an occupied 
city, Lannes’ chief suspect is 
untouchable, protected by a 
relative in the Vichy government. 
Lannes himself is threatened 
with blackmail on account of his 
Jewish friends and Dominique 
is taken prisoner. Common 
sense should make Lannes 
abandon the investigation, but 
honour and a natural obstinacy 
lead him to pursue it. However, as events turn 
increasingly bleak, Lannes begins to doubt it 
can ever be solved!Allan Johnstone Massie 
CBE (Commander of the Order of the British 
Empire) is a Scottish journalist, columnist, 
sports writer and novelist. He is a Fellow of the 
Royal Society of Literature. He has lived in the 
Scottish Borders for the last 25 years, and now 
lives in Selkirk


Jeff’s History Corner By Jeff Brown

HILLARY CLINTON’S WELLESLEY COLLEGE YEARS.

 In 1965, Hillary enrolled at Wellesley College, where 
she majored in political science. During her freshman 
year, she served as president of the Wellesley Young 
Republicans;she supported the elections of Mayor 
John Lindsay and of Senator Edward Brooke.She 
later stepped down from this position, as her views 
changed regarding the American Civil Rights 
Movement and the Vietnam War.In a letter to her 
youth minister at this time, she described herself 
as “a mind conservative and a heart liberal”. In 
contrast to the 1960s current that advocated radical 
actions against the political system, she sought to 
work for change within it.In her junior year, Hillary 
became a supporter of the antiwar Democrat Eugene 
McCarthy.In 1968, she was elected president of the 
Wellesley College Government Association and 
served through early 1969. After the assassination 
of Martin Luther King, Jr., Hillary organized a two-
day student strike and worked with Wellesley’s black 
students to recruit more black students and faculty.
In her student government role, she played a role 
in keeping Wellesley from being embroiled in the 
student disruptions common to other colleges.A 
number of her fellow students thought she might 
some day become the first female President of the 
United States.To help her better understand her 
changing political views, Professor Alan Schechter 
assigned Hillary to intern at the House Republican 
Conference, and she attended the “Wellesley in 
Washington” summer program. She was invited by 
New York Representative Charles Goodell to help 
Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s late-entry campaign 
for the Republican nomination. Hillary attended the 
1968 Republican National Convention. However, 
she was upset by the way Richard Nixon’s campaign 
portrayed Rockefeller and by what she perceived as 
the convention’s “veiled” racist messages, and left the 
Republican Party for good.In 1969, she graduated 
with departmental honors in political science. She 
became the first student in Wellesley College history 
to deliver its commencement address. Her speech 
received a standing ovation lasting seven minutes. She 
was featured in an article published in Life magazine, 
due to the response to a part of her speech that 
criticized Senator Brooke, who had spoken before 
her at the commencement. She also appeared on a 
nationally syndicated television talk show as well as in 
Illinois and New England newspapers. That summer, 
she worked her way across Alaska, washing dishes in 
Mount McKinley National Park and sliming salmon 
in a fish processing cannery in Valdez (which fired 
her and shut down overnight when she complained 
about unhealthful conditions).The above from 
Wikipedia.


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