The Divergent series has, in many ways, been doomed from go. Propping up the dystopian hero’s story is a clumsily conceived, confusing “faction” system that makes so little sense it can cause spontaneous combustion if meditated on for extended periods of time. So, here we are, considering Allegiant, the third entry in the series based on Veronica Roth’s popular YA books, directed by Robert Schwentke. While the overlong, bland, uninspired, nonsensical movie didn’t cause said spontaneous combustion, my explosive demise is imminent; there’s another one coming out next summer, part two of this miserably drawn-out finale, and if there’s any silver lining, it’s that we can at least say there’s an end game in sight.

Again, we join Tris (Shailene Woodley) as she continues to unravel the mystery of “the founders,” the people who set up the cockamamie faction system however-many years ago. To catch up: Until the final events of Insurgent, Chicago had been divided into districts, whose residents are assigned according to their dominant personality traits. Upon opening a mystery box left by the founders, Tris and the rest of Chicago learns that there are people beyond the sky-high city walls that have confined them for all this time, a revelation that effectively collapses the longstanding faction system and sends plucky Tris, her super-soldier boyfriend Four (Theo James) and their rebellious friends on a quest to find out, once and for all, what’s beyond the wall.

An underwhelming run-n-gun sequence follows our heroes as they evade military forces sent by Four’s mom, Evelyn (Naomi Watts), who in the last movie disposed of the tyrannical Janine (Kate Winslet), only to (predictably) adopt the former leader’s totalitarian tendencies. The group makes it over the wall, but not before two of the series’ prominent characters of color—played by Mekhi Phifer and Maggie Q, who are each given virtually no dialogue as a parting gift—are gunned down, likely to make room for the new influx of white actors we’re about to meet (Daniel Dae Kim shows up for a second too, another minority bit-part designed to create a false sense of diversity). Not an uncommon Hollywood practice, but frustrating nonetheless.

On the other side of the wall, we find a Martian-looking wasteland, an army bearing futuristic weaponry, a new city (built, amusingly, on the remains of O’Hare International Airport), and a benevolent leader David (a sleepy Jeff Daniels), who informs Tris that she is the sole success of the “Chicago experiment” the founders set up all those years ago. There are details, but they’re too stupid and uninteresting to get into here. The basics are, Tris is the key to the prosperity of the human race, and David, who (surprise!) isn’t as benevolent as he appears to be, pampers her into ignoring her friends to concentrate on fulfilling his Hitler-y dreams. Four, Christina (Zoe Kravitz), and Tris brother Caleb (Ansel Elgort) do their best to snap Tris out of her self-aggrandizing daydream while also dealing with a civil war that’s broken out back in Chicago between Evelyn and Johanna’s (Octavia Spencer) respective followers.

The logic of the faction system was already frustrating, but now the series introduces this master-race narrative that only makes things worse. It simply isn’t clear what the message is Roth and the filmmakers are trying to get across. Is it that everyone’s special? No one is special? Tris seems pretty special. So do her friends. They all specialize in one thing—Four kicks major ass, Caleb’s good with tech—but the movie seems to be saying that their laser career focus is the result of genetic tampering or something, which leads us back to the secret behind the faction system mess. I can feel my body wanting to burst now, as I type this.

The enjoyable thing about Insurgent was that the action was urgent and inventive, but the set pieces here feel more trite and way less entertaining. The folks beyond the wall have nicer looking lasers and flying bubble ships than the dirty trucks and machine guns we’ve seen in the previous installments, which is a welcome change, but one can’t get over the fact that every bit of art design we see feels woefully generic, as if they were scrounged from a bin of unused video game assets. Unexpectedly missed are the surrealistic dream sequences from the first movies.

Perhaps the biggest head-scratcher of all is how a movie can fail so epically with such an amazing cast of seasoned vets and young stars populating the screen at any given moment. For goodness sake, you’ve got Spencer, Watts, and Daniels bouncing off of Woodley, Elgort, James (who’s not half bad here, actually), Kravitz, and Miles Teller, whose charisma can make the most terrible line work, at least to some extent. The Whiplash star is a standout as the opportunistic Peter, whose flips in allegiance have been enjoyable throughout the series. My feeling is that the cast makes a terrible script feel somewhat coherent and emotionally grounded, and for that the unlucky few who actually see this movie in a theater should be thankful.

It’s the end of Indiecast Week and in anticipation of tomorrow’s Oscars, Bernard and CJ share their picks for who should and will win! Also, two special guests join the show as director John Hillcoat and Breaking Bad actor Aaron Paul talk about their new crime-thriller, Triple 9, out in theaters now. Bernard shares his impressions of the film and the boys offer two more Indie Picks of the Week. What more could you want? We hope you enjoyed Indiecast Week as much as we did!

Topics

• Indie Picks (3:17)
• Oscar Picks (15:42)
• John Hillcoat (37:57)
• Aaron Paul (47:47)
• Triple 9 Review (50:16)

Articles Referenced

• Triple 9 Review
• Tobias Lindholm Interview
• Aaron Paul Long Interview
• John Hillcoat Long Interview

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As is the case with Quentin Tarantino‘s The Hateful Eight, you’ll find no heroes in John Hillcoat‘s likewise numerically titled Triple 9, a solid, well-acted crime-thriller in which nearly all of its dozen-or-so main characters carry a badge, though about half of them are crooked. These slimeballs use their position in law enforcement as a guise for a big-time heist operation; their non-criminal counterparts on the force are bent on smoking out who’s behind the bank robberies as the perps hide in plain sight just one desk over. The “good cops” aren’t as straight-laced as you’d imagine, however: Policing the rough Atlanta streets keeps their skin and wits tough and their scary obsession with putting the heist-pullers away could put innocent people in danger.

By all accounts, it was Hillcoat’s name that first compelled the stacked, A-list ensemble to flock to the project, and it was the complex, unpredictable, multi-protag script that got them to stay. Each talent—Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kate Winslet, Casey Affleck, Woody Harrelson, Anthony Mackie, and the list goes on—makes a big impression; this is an ensemble piece through and through. But the egalitarian approach to the ensemble doesn’t work as well as it does in Hateful Eight or even Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight because the characters’ murky motivations, combined with the dizzying, often disorganized plot, make the experience as a whole a little hard to follow. There’s too much to keep track of, too little to latch onto.

A team of trained professionals led by Michael (Ejiofor) pulls off a bank robbery in the heart of Atlanta. They’re working (reluctantly) for Russian mob boss Irna (Winslet), who’s tasked them not with bringing her bags of loot but with retrieving a safety deposit box she needs to free her husband from prison. Jorge (Clifton Collins Jr., terrific as usual) and Marcus (Mackie) currently work as cops and Michael and Russel (Norman Reedus) are ex-Special Forces. These four are cool as cucumbers but Russel’s strung-out younger brother, Gabe (Aaron Paul) nearly causes the caper to go South. Going forward, as they resume their lives post-heist, the sloppy Gabe will more than likely become a liability and the rest of the team knows it.

Draped in woefully mismatched, fake-fancy garb, Irna is a welcome change from the familiar crime boss archetype, at least in tone and, of course, gender. Considering this role and other, villainous turn in the Divergent series, it seems the Oscar winner’s developing a taste for the wicked. She’s really good at it: The blood boils when we learn Irna’s holding Michael’s son—who also happens to be her own nephew (Gal Gadot plays his mom)—captive, blackmailing him to reassemble his team and carry out yet another risky operation, breaking into a Homeland Security facility of all places. To pull it off, the team resorts to using a “triple-nine” (code for “officer down”), distracting local law enforcement as they snatch Irna’s precious cargo in the shadows.

They need a good (unsuspecting) cop to be the “triple-nine” and Marcus nominates his new partner Chris (Affleck), who’s just transferred from another division. The new guy has just been branded a walking dead man by his own partner. One of the many x-factors in the scheme is Chris’ uncle (Harrelson) is a detective on the force himself and is leading a tireless investigation on Michael’s undercover gang. When the shit hits the fan and Chris sits in Marcus’ crosshairs, it’s amid a tornado of unexpected betrayals, murders and changes of heart that change the complexion of the “triple-9” altogether.

The plot’s too intricate and the dialogue is too expository to give the character work the clear focus it deserves. The performers are terrific and enrich their characters even when their screen time is woefully limited but one can’t help but wonder how much smoother the movie would flow with less attention dedicated to the plot. There’s no central character, after all, so every moment the actors get is incredibly precious. Fortunately, the actors make the best of their constraints, with each of their characters ultimately sticking in your mind in one way or another. None of them (besides Winslet) are playing against-type, so they all seem comfortable in their roles, which works greatly in the movie’s favor.

Aside from the acting, the movie’s greatest strength is the action sequences which, despite being preposterously elaborate and chaotic are presented with great care. The action is surprisingly easy to follow, and Hillcoat’s gift is that his set pieces, as they move briskly along through interiors and exteriors and different neighborhoods, simultaneously immerse us in the gritty surroundings and thrill us with expertly staged gunfights, foot-chases and fisticuffs. As far as the action is concerned, the presentation is slick, slick, slick. If only the narrative would take a few steps back and let the human drama and gunfire take more of the spotlight, Triple 9 could have been tremendous.

Perhaps for the entirety of his career, Aaron Paul will be tied to the iconic role of Breaking Bad‘s burnout-turned-meth-hero Jesse Pinkman. It’s something he’s thankful for: “I’m very blessed to have played an iconic character,” he says graciously. Since that landmark TV show, Paul’s stayed away from drug-addict roles for obvious reasons. But when he was presented with the script for John Hillcoat‘s ensemble crime-thriller Triple 9, he jumped at the chance to work with the director, despite the fact that he’d once again have to pick up a pipe on-screen.

The decision paid off: Paul is an absolute standout in a movie full of Hollywood heavy-hitters including Kate Winslet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Casey Affleck, Woody Harrelson, Anthony Mackie, Gal Gadot, Norman Reedus, Clifton Collins Jr., and more. Playing a member of a gang crooked cops pulling off an elaborate, dangerous heist, the still-evolving actor makes every onscreen minute count, creating a character with dimension and depth in what’s essentially a series of quick glimpses. Looks like he’s continuing to hone the tools he sharpened opposite Bryan Cranston on that seminal show forever doomed him to be referred to as “bitch” by his adoring fans. “I gotta take it in stride, you know?”

In a roundtable interview, I spoke to Paul about Triple 9, which is out in theaters nationwide today.

You’re sort of unrecognizable in this movie. The hair, the strung-out-ness. How did you go to that place? It feels like he’s so out of his depth at this point in his life.
He’s going through a lot. It was kind of easy; it was just on the page. I think these characters were so well developed before I even attached myself. Before we even started, John gave us all a giant folder of information, a dropbox that just kept filling up every day with images that are impossible to erase from your mind. Decapitated heads…he wanted us to draw from our own knowledge.

He had me go on some ridealongs with the LAPD and I saw some pretty crazy stuff. We drove around East L.A. in a neighborhood I’ve never been to in my life. You just see how cops are viewed. We pulled over this guy whose girlfriend had just been shot. She was in the front seat, his mom was in the back seat. This was now his third strike because he had a loaded gun on him with the serial number scratched off. Things got pretty real. He was arrested went down to the station. They take off his shoes, he’s handcuffed to this bench, and they ask me if I want to go in and interview him. He has tattoos all over his face—scariest guy I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m like, “No…I don’t want to go.” There was no reason for me to go interview him but I did end up going in to talk to him. He ended up being a fan of Breaking Bad, which is pretty funny.

What was your reaction to the script and this idea of these characters pulling off a “triple 9?”
God, I loved this script. I knew with John holding the reigns it was going to be such a brutal telling of this story but in a grounded way. I didn’t know what “triple 9” meant before shooting this film but it absolutely makes sense. If someone wants to cause a distraction in the police force, that’s definitely the way to do it. I love the story.

Early in the movie, you and Norman have a pivotal scene together. I think it’s such an important scene because you have to establish a lot of the emotional stakes for what’s to come for those characters.
Norman and I have been friends for the past sixteen, seventeen years. It’s the first time we’ve worked together, and we’re playing brothers, so we already have that bond, that love there. That scene you’re talking about was an added scene we shot after we were done shooting. They wanted to do just that—raise the stakes, really let people know that these guys aren’t just friends; they’re brothers. They love each other. It was great. I love that scene.

There are similarities between this character and Jesse Pinkman. Do you feel constrained by how iconic that character is?
I definitely don’t see Jesse Pinkman leaving me anytime soon. I know for the rest of my life I’m going to be called “bitch.” I gotta take it in stride, you know? I’m very blessed to have played such an iconic character [on a] show that became a part of television history. He’s a part of pop culture. It’s all about trying to do something different from that guy. This is really the first role since that show where my character’s picking up a pipe. I get offered drug addict roles all the time, on a weekly basis. I just try to stay away from that. But this script was impossible to ignore. It was beautiful. And, of course, John Hillcoat was the first name I noticed before I started reading it. It was a great ride, but when [my character] picked up the pipe, I was like, “Aww…Does he have to do that?”

The movie felt a lot like Heat.
Yeah. Heat is one of those timeless films. I really hope Triple 9 becomes that. My father-in-law was so excited. “It was like Heat! It’s like Taxi Driver!” I agree with him. It’s one of those gritty, brutal, crazy films.

You’re an actor who acts with his whole body. I appreciate that. Is it something you think about when you’re on camera or no?
It just kind of comes with the territory for me. Every character’s a little different. The only similarity is that I tend to gravitate toward characters that are going through a lot, emotionally. I think emotions run through your entire body. You kind of put yourself in a situation and force yourself to believe in whatever’s going on and hopefully people buy it.

In Need For Speed you were at the head of the ensemble. For this movie, it’s more of an egalitarian mix. How are those experiences different?
[One’s] less work, less shooting days. But I love them both. I love the ensemble cast. There are twelve main characters in this film and everyone has such a pivotal part in the story. With Need For Speed, I was in almost every scene. It was a lot of work.

What about the next movie, Eye in the Sky? What’s it like going from playing a criminal in this movie to playing someone who’s straight-laced and in the military?
I do play the darker side of things. But I always try to bring some sort of heart to my characters. With Triple 9, he’s technically a bad guy but you feel for him. He has a line he will not cross and this is that line, so he’s desperate to stop it from happening.

He’s really the hero of the movie.
Finally, someone said it! [laughs] It’s great being the bad guy and it’s also great being the good guy.

Who’s an actor that would be a dream for you to work with?
Oh man, there’s so many. I think probably Daniel Day-Lewis. He’s my favorite actor, for sure.

How about actors who aren’t alive?
You’re really changing things up on me, man! I would love to work with Marilyn Monroe. She’s such an idol, such a legend. I’d just love to kind of hang out with her in between takes and see what she’s all about.

A genre adventurer of sorts, filmmaker John Hillcoat has made a western (The Proposition), a post-apocalyptic drama (The Road) and a period gangster movie (Lawless) in his career thus far. Now, with Triple 9, he tackles the crime thriller genre, assembling an A-list cast (including the likes of Kate Winslet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Clifton Collins Jr., Casey Affleck, Woody Harrelson, Norman Reedus, Aaron Paul, Anthony Mackie and more) to tell a gritty, urban tale of crooked cops, bank heists, double-turns and gang violence. Set in Atlanta, the film holds authenticity as its highest priority as the dozen-or-so protagonists maneuver, duck and dodge around each other until the bloody, bitter end.

In a roundtable interview, I spoke with Hillcoat about the film, which opens tomorrow nationwide.

You’ve expressed your desire to elevate genre movies. How did you elevate the crime thriller with Triple 9?
I feel like this genre, in recent years, has become very unrealistic. Initially, there were the golden years when film noir was created and all these fantastic, murky shades of grey were created. In the ’70s, they took all of these great genres and shook them up and gave them this kind of gritty realism. That’s what I miss in contemporary crime thrillers. The characters always seem to be chasing the plot. I wanted to find something where you didn’t know what was coming. In a lot of this genre, I feel like I already know what’s going to happen before it happens. [I also wanted to show] shades of grey instead of black and white. Again, in this genre, it’s become, “there’s the good guy, there’s the bad guy.” With all of that, I also wanted to bring it into a contemporary landscape. The world of crime out there in urban cities has completely changed.

When this script crossed your desk, was it something where you were looking to do something in this vein? What got your neurons firing?
I’d been looking for a contemporary crime thriller to do for well over a decade. My problem was, every time I’d read something, I felt like I could predict what was coming around the corner. My manager and producer brought a first-time writer and showed me this script because they knew I wanted a crime thriller that was a bit more unpredictable and grounded in reality.

There’s a lot to keep track of in this movie. It’s a controlled chaos. As I was watching the movie I thought, the casting is so key because these characters have to make big impression in just a small amount of screen time.
That was the single biggest challenge out of anything, to assemble that cast and line it up to where they all had a window available at that one time. It was beyond any rubik’s cube out there. The intention was to create a milieu and world you’re immersed in as opposed to the classic, two-hander thing. I love a film like Nashville where you’re just with characters very briefly but you feel like you could disappear into their lives. Life is like that too in a crowded urban environment. I wanted to get that sea of humanity. That’s what was great about this cast—they’re all so different and bring such idiosyncratic detail. We were conscious of that going in. They had to make interesting choices and create layers because of exactly that: screen time.

I was impressed by the action mostly because the things that are happening onscreen are unpredictable and chaotic and unexpectedly change location frequently. But I never felt lost, geographically. That must be incredibly difficult to pull off.
It took immense planning. We had whole maps of neighborhoods, we had meetings with different departments, we had models made. We had different visual references made for different departments saying, “Look, here’s an accident. We want it to look like that.” There was a lot of research as well. I was working with a very gifted second-unit action guy who did the Bourne Identity films and has an immense knowledge of that. We love realism and accidents, so we’re always on the lookout for how we find those and reference those in each situation and make it work cinematically.

I think you’ll know what I mean when I say this—I feel like you as a filmmaker respect the act of violence.
I take violence very seriously. I feel like there are no real victors. There’s always an element of chaos and, psychologically, no one comes out unscathed. I think that’s the key, for the actors to feel very much like it’s their choice or whatever they do that creates the situation, the build-up to it. Then, it’s how they process it afterward. When I’m working with an actor on these sort of things, I’m looking more at the before and after than the actual incident. We are human, and that’s the thing I try to do, get that human experience instead of just seeing bodies flying apart. That doesn’t mean anything. And you’ve just reminded me, that’s something we were very conscious of: We wanted to make every single death that happens matter. It’s a significant event every time. In crime thrillers, that’s really not considered. The body count is just, like, very gratuitous.

I thought there was strategic value to the decision of killing off a particular actor early on in the movie. Audiences are very familiar with this person. It was kind of like a Janet Leigh in Psycho thing.
That was very intentional. We wanted to create a situation where even the characters would suddenly take this situation very seriously. It’s that feeling of not knowing who’s next. And yet, we all know—and they know as characters—that they’ve chosen this life and nothing’s going to change that. They kind of know that, eventually, they won’t be retired on a tropical island. That’s not really what comes of this. And they never know when that moment is going to happen.

You’ve said before that you’ve witnessed violence growing up and have been a victim of violence. Do you think, as a filmmaker, that you have to have had that hands-on experience to portray violence onscreen authentically?
I think it’s definitely helped and given me more respect in trying to get to the truth of the matter and take it more seriously. I’m very influenced by other movies, but I do love that kind of one foot in reality. That has, unfortunately, [happened to me]. But I would never perscribe that as a prerequisite for film students. [laughs] “Doing a crime film? Shoot yourself in the leg!” [laughs] I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone but it certainly has impacted the work I do very much.