Netflix movie of the day: Triple Frontier is a tense military thriller from the writer of The Hurt Locker
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If you love a hardcore 'dad movie', you can stop browsing Netflix now and jump straight to Triple Frontier. Starring Ben Affleck, Pedro Pascal, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam, and Garrett Hedlund, it's about a group of ex-military guys who are presented with the opportunity to assassinate a drug lord and quietly steal his riches for themselves. But in the vein of movies like Sam Raimi's A Simple Plan or the Coen brother's Fargo, this is about how seeing a huge sum of money just breaks people's brains – even the most disciplined and experienced people. Written by Mark Boal, a former journalist who also wrote The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, it's a gritty, weighty thriller that also reminds me of William Friedkin's classic Sorceror.
Triple Frontier is almost two movies in one. The first is about these guys making the heavy decision to take on their self-defined mission, the planning and work that goes into it, and then pulling off a combined assault and heist on the house of the drug lord.
This goes both better and worse than expected and leads into the second part: a long tense escape across a section of South America. It's not a simple chase of them running from a militia behind them – part of the problem is the sheer physical struggle of transporting millions and millions of dollars in cash. It's big, it's heavy, and the terrain is not forgiving. Decisions made earlier finally deliver their consequences here, and you have no idea how many of the team are likely to make it out… if any.
It's a pretty stone-faced movie that's hard to watch at times, so I wouldn't say it'll rank among the best Netflix movies for absolutely everyone, but if its description checks your boxes, you won't be disappointed.
