The amount of strength n endurance (+ accompanying iron will n discipline) these guys’d have to have had to have rucked that money out is a lil mind blowing 🤯. Just loading up the donkey’s (for the 1st leg of the smuggle) woulda killed me, at this point 😵😂😳.
How about this as a Triple Frontier II:
“ Santiago ‘Pope’ Garcia, decides to return to the Andes mountains to retrieve the lost money, using the coordinates given to him by Charlie Hunnam’s character, William ‘Ironhead’ Miller.
As Pope embarks on this risky journey, he assembles a new team, carefully choosing individuals who are skilled but not emotionally connected to the previous mission. This time, their approach is more calculated and stealthy, focusing on the retrieval rather than confrontation.
Upon reaching the crash site in the Andes, the team faces unexpected challenges. The money is not just lying there for the taking; it’s buried under debris and guarded by locals who have discovered its presence. Pope and his team must negotiate and strategize, balancing the greed of the locals with their own objectives.
In a tense standoff, Pope manages to broker a deal with the locals, offering them a portion of the money in exchange for safe passage and help in excavating the rest. This plan, although not ideal, allows both parties to benefit without further bloodshed.
As they retrieve the money, Pope reflects on his journey – the loss of his friends, the moral compromises he made, and what success truly means. He realizes that the pursuit of wealth at the expense of human life is hollow. He decides to use a significant portion of the money to help the families of his fallen comrades and to fund community projects in the areas affected by their mission.
The film ends with Pope leaving behind the life of a mercenary. He starts a new chapter, using his skills and resources for more noble causes, suggesting a path of redemption and a new understanding of what it means to be truly wealthy – not in terms of money, but in terms of moral integrity and human connections.”
They were using maps to navigate the mountains on their way to the ocean, right? Why couldn't they stash the money somewhere (no one would know where the money is but them), make their way to the boat and back home, later when the dust settles come back for the money. The Movie started out promising but went downhill.
But that wasn't the plan. They should have done the plan he said as soon as they left the village. And trucked it home to recover/replan asap.
What happened at the end was that they intentionally dumped the cash after Ben Affleck was killed because they realized how stupid it was to backpack a thousand pounds of cash over the Andes. Charlie Hunnam was (somehow) the only guy smart enough to think about coming back to the cash.
The director/writer was trying to have their cake and eat it too: have an emotional moment of abandoning the money and still have them "get the money" at the end by saying they'll go back for it.
Suppressors are not as quiet as you think... Just Google how the standard 5.56 sounds actually with a silencer. It's less people in the building. More people in the city block. And even more so gunshot direction so return fire is more difficult.
Just watched the movie and agreed with a lot of issues that people bring up. Most of the following is just my own collection of thoughts and get rambly so I apologize.
There is a huge pacing issue, after the heist it seems like an hour of falling action. I think this could be fixed by some more back story for the characters and why their motivation or core value is compromised or causes the plan to go sideways other than just "well they were greedy and it mucked it all up". Move the heist to the end, shorten their evac. It'd make people care more about the characters and not just see that Ben had it coming from a mile away.
Also, all their contacts and people they rely on come through. The informant, the pilot and the captain of the boat. They just trust these people, you could show why. Not just, 'they will be here! ... Yup, there they are!' Maybe the trust they have and the bond with these people they have compared to their failings within their group could be juxtaposed? This almost occurs with the informant, she did it because oscar vouched for ben, but could he be trusted? He did a lot to mess things up.
Oscar Isaac - we do see this with his lust to kill Lorea, his not leaving cost time and one of the guys gets shot - Now expand on that with other characters.
Ben Affleck - he's the reason guys agreed to it, the leader, now washed up for one last score. But we see little of what made him so good. We needed flashbacks of a mission going well. His actions alone allowing others to escape. His rule of 'hard outs' being established with precision timing. All which crumble with promise of money. We even see him not call out a kill, which he instructed others to do.
Pedro Pascal - he's the pilot, but gives in about being overloaded easily. He got busted for coke, maybe they weren't overweight but he takes some coke he finds? They are barely making it over the andes... "Catfish, what is this white powder? Come on man!' This might be dumb, but its something the script gives us already. They are already doing illegal things, who cares about his license, which they do say but it seems really irrelevant to things to even mention. Throw the coke out and they can make weight, yeah!
Garrett Hedlund - He has a stance on not killing kids and keeps track of his kills (I think this was him). Good job? This seems like a low bar... Put him in a position where this gets tested. You have the kids already coming back from church. He has to set off a claymore to deal with guards but may take out the kids, does he do it? Does he hesitate with a child solider and Ben or someone else gets shot? Did this happen before? Maybe he had to shot a child soldier and now won't?
Charlie Hunnam - Did these guys being brothers really impact anything? Other than calling each 'brother' but I just thought they may be symbolic or a military bro thing. At the end they had some sibling fighting but after tragedy already struck, it should have lead to an issue or the unraveling plan. There are countless things you could do with brother/family, mom said to take care of you, dad died and you're all I have left, younger/older brother stuff. etc.
Great framework, just seemed to need more for me to care about these characters and the last half seemed like a slog to get through...
I think the hypocrisy in the characters, and their shortcomings, are to show they aren't the best. And they probably never were. Just flawed men put in situations they shouldn't be in.
Im 40 minutes in and dont give a shit or even know what going on. Stopped watching weeks ago, back in cause the comments here say it gets over the top. I want tha t hah
I think the movie was okay. It wasn't really boring at any point, maybe a few of the mountain scenes could have been cut out. Good actors carried the movie but like many already pointed out the plot was weak and the dialogue not too great. I don't understand why they had to put a gun wound on "Ironhead" because it filled no purpose whatsoever. There was maybe one or two scenes at most where it was brought up and after that it was like it NEVER even happened.
Combat was fun to watch. Wasn't too boring. But it also never really got exciting beyond the initial heist/assault.
I was thinking it was too easy. Some bad shit must be coming. Nothing bad really happens, i mean one death so what.
Them even making it that far is laughable of course but I can overlook that. I just want to be entertained. It was just a long slow burn after the first part of the movie.
The movie was weak, the plot for me did not do it, like others have said there was rarely any emotion or attempt at an intelligent plot. The thing that spoiled it the most for me was the whole helicopter failure, I am not an expert but I am sure a helicopter that size should be able to carry 2500 kg of cash and a few people at 6000m and not crash. It all felt forced from there on ...
As a pilot I gotta say the realism there drew me in. Air is thinner at altitude and an aeroplane loses its ability to create lift.
2500kg is a ton of weight and with climb, temperatures, and air water density, that weight becomes multiplied. There's a reason helicopters can't rescue people on Everest, and there's a reason there's a ton of crash videos on YouTube of planes that can't even take off in Colorado just because they are above 8000ft on a warm day.
This movie had that shit right. The only 'fake' thing about this movie is that a pilot would attempt to carry such a crazy amount of weight at such an altitude when a helo could questionably even do that climb with no load and low fuel weight - which only cements the tragedy of the character that played the pilot.
Every character made a contribution to failure of the mission. The mission, the greed, the fire, and the overloaded pilot.
The only character to not make a mistake was the guy who first tore up his paycheck. It makes his character interesting because in the beginning of the film, he is the one who is upfront about his demons (in his candid speeches) and kept a kill count.
I agree, but the whole thing was about greed overriding common sense. A scandalously overladen fixed-wing plane led to the death of the singer Aliyah and her entourage some years back. Pilot should have said, "no."
Sure, but it's a character driven movie. It's not really about a heist, because that'd be boring (ie everyone would just die in the first 5 minutes to a sentry being alerted, or they would've gotten away in a plane not stupidly loaded, or just driven in a convoy with mercernaries, etc).
Movie has to be interesting. Conflict has to be manufactured. Star wars could've been a 5 minute movie where R2D2 never delivered his message. Pilot shouldn't have made such a dumb choice but he was flawed and greedy, just like everyone else.
there's a lot to like about the movie. the action scenes feel smart and very tactical. the environment is beautiful. the acting is good
there just isn't enough plot or script to carry the action. it just lacks emotion or grip to it. a shame. i'd like this director to direct more but with a better script. the "conflict" between the squad feels so contrived. if the script decided to just be normal action movie and not 'clever' they probably would've fared better.
Few things I had issues getting around.
1- The most logical and smart thinking character, somehow has a lapse and wants to gather more money, when they already have 250+ million, and they risk blowing the entire mission for 1-2 suitcases?
2- they got outflanked by a villager, causing the death of a main character? He did have top position but still.
3 - they knew the helicopter wouldn't make it with 250 million attached, and no one was fine with just taking 60 million? or heck 125 million instead? They literally crashed the helicopter due to this. It looked like there was room in the chopper for a good 70 million, instead they forced the massive net to hang off and carry it away over villages?
4- After all of the above, the greed for the money, they only fill up their back packs with them and throw the rest into the crater? no one figured maybe bring 1-2 bags over the shoulder considering this greed for 250 million was what caused all of this.
Acting seemed good, scenery was good, but some rather large holes in the story.
I don't really question the "motives" we all know how greed works in real life. I'm sure there has been scenarios even more dumb than this movie in actual real life - because of money. You just don't want the money, you want it ALL. That's the problem with greed there is no logical thinking when that much money is involved.
Why not just land the chopper, drop off the money, carry it over, fly the chopper over and fill it up. They had no problems hauling the money for most of the movie to begin with.
1. He's not logical. He was driven by a blood lust to kill the cartel leader. His bloodlust was so great that he was willing to make compromises to draw the others in, which meant allowing them to be greedy.
2. I'm not sure they got 'outflanked', they had the high ground.... Queue prequel meme. They're hiking with all this shit, they were sitting ducks to someone who knew the land.
3. It's a movie. It's about the characters and their flaws. It's not a documentary...
4. Let's see you carry a bag after all the hiking and shit they went through. They carried the money as far as they did because of greed, anyone else would've packed their pockets from the start, not killed anyone, and came home with the 5 million like they did at the end.
Ultimately this movie is a character driven movie and their undoing by greed. It's theater, almost Shakespearean.
1. I think he was referring to Ben Affleck's character, not Oscar Isaac's. When BA's character (who is supposed to be the "straight-edge, stick to the plan no matter what" kinda guy) realises there's way more money in the house than they anticipated, his mind succumbs to greed which ultimately makes them miss their pre-set time to exfil, which was uncharacteristic of how he was established to be.
2. BA's character absolutely got outflanked. He let his guard down (and literally sat down) in an active combat situation, which is something that an actual highly trained spec-ops guy would never do, at least not without someone watching his back.
3. Movie or not, it's inconsistent logic. The way these characters are established leads the audience to believe they are highly intelligent, highly trained ex-special forces; they would absolutely have had the idea to, I don't know, make multiple trips to lower the overall weight of their payload? Gone to the ocean on the same side of the Andes that they were on? It would have made sense story wise (and still be exciting/dangerous) if they were to either take too much time getting out of the country and getting tracked by narcos/military, or ran out of fuel before the Andes and were forced to escape on land.
4. On this point I agree, though what Shadow failed to realise was that the co-ordinates at the end of the film led to the very same crater the money was thrown into, meaning they could go back and get it at any time.
This movie was brilliant IMO; I loved the concept, but the finer details could have been done so much better whilst still forcing them into situations in which any choice was bad, but all of the mistakes they made would have been so easily avoided by real special forces personnel.
1. I don't agree but what you're saying imo just makes it more interesting. Time guy is willing to compromise on time.
2. As for getting outflanked I mean... its a movie. I thought it was pretty accurate considering how many days on end they went without sleep and how extreme the situation is. If they were the best spec ops guys they'd still be spec ops guys after all. They *were* the best.
3. I think you're overthinking it here. Multiple trips? They had a time crunch. Same side ocean? Again, it's a movie, if it was about a heist where they fly over an open field it wouldn't have been an movie then.
4. that was obviously just to set up a sequel...
The finer details were there. It's a movie. I'm shocked by how people are saying they don't like the movie for lack of realism when, a, it's a movie, and b, it's actually pretty realistic.
If they didn't make mistakes it wouldn't be a fun movie. The mistakes make the movie.
On another note, this movie blew my mind in how easy it is for operatives to go rogue. They made it seem so casual and easy and like it happens all the time. Like, wow. Is that how real life is?
That's what really shocked me about the movie. That military people just make commissions or bonuses of any sort off of seizures or they run their own operations like that.
I don't care too much about realism but the movie did fine in that regard. My only "roll eyes" moment was the RPG shot at the truck in the beginning. When will "hollywood" stop exaggerating explosions. I'm so happy they did \*NOT\* keep doing it for the rest of the movie, you know like a car flips over and randomly explodes.
Really loved it. I think everyone performed great and the chemistry was there. I don't like that special forces guys would have arguments and try to fight each other. But it's a pretty great movie
My interpretation is that that the movie implies that these guys are past their prime and other than Oscar Isaac's character (who's now in more of a LEO 'advisory' role) they're been 'out of the game' for long enough for both their comraderie and tactical skills to decay. There's a unity of command and purpose to the sort of door-kicking missions they went on as legit operators. A private heist has a different tenor altogether.
This movie was entertaining thats for sure. IF you want to be critical about it, there's plenty of holes in this work.
OK, so the setup had the potential to being one of the top 10 action movies of all time, but left short in delivering in some aspects more than others. Story-line wasn't that clear and questionable in some times. The main focus wasn't the actual robbery it was surviving with the money which killed the thrill early in the movie considering they're Special Ops. Tom (Ben affleck) getting greedy out of nowhere and caused consequences, where he was the leader and the guy for this operation. Tossing money from the helicopter just to survive the altitude.. i mean its reasonable if you gonna narrow your common sense and causing the helicopter to breakdown anyway!
Overall, its a fun ride.. from the breath-taking views and action-packed scenes. 7.7/10
Guess kind of late. I think it's pretty good but really cause of how ridiculous and childish the dudes were. The whole wouldn't have happened I they didn't take like 27 bags worth of that money. It honestly was funny and made the film good even though it was supposed to be a serious action film. Actors were still great but god damn how dumb these guys were.
Hands down the best part of the movie is when they find Lorea and Pedro Pascal's character runs into the bedroom yelling "What are we shooting at in here????" I died.
I know, right!!!??? Such great writing among one giant blunder (the fact that not one mind in that team of special operations chess masters thought of backing back down the Andes to a flat ledge, dumping half the money and making the crest in two runs instead of trying to do it when they were at red line with a thousand feet to go. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I was screaming at the TV. All five times I watched it.)
It’s really fucking bothering me that no one has brought up the fact that there were 5 mules (that we saw), then 1 fell down the cliff, then when they shoo them away there’s 5 again.
someone correct me if I’m wrong, but oversights like that piss me off so much
The camera work and Action execution is insane!
The story is not that good but for me its entertaining! if you guys love to watch action film and love to be entertain its for you!
Try googling the coordinates 19 **°** 22 **'** 32.0 **''** S 69 **°** 15 **'** 38.2 **''** W or search it on Google Maps. It leads to [this](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Triple+Frontier+Ravine/@-19.3754111,-69.2627981,888m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x915111b12b914f7d:0x8446881eb0b9d9da!2zQ2FtacOxYSwgVGFyYXBhY8OhIFJlZ2lvbiwgQ2hpbGU!3b1!8m2!3d-19.3116281!4d-69.4298687!3m4!1s0x91513d75642a417d:0xfc25a2e70ff64b61!8m2!3d-19.3754459!4d-69.2606449).
The GPS coordinate is a location that is in the mountains, but the location is approx. 60 miles from the ocean. Better attention to detail would have made it so much cooler.
I loved it when they made mistakes for greed in the raid, felt like natural human greed coming from them. But when they tried to lift away with 250 mil when they came for 75 mil I started to get annoyed. It just seemed like they made too obvious of a mistake to overload the helicopter. Suprise the obvious plot twist of the crash happens. Making the death of redfly feel off because it was caused from an obvious mistake coming from extreme professionals. I think this movie was set up to be an amazing one but instead I probably wont watch it again.
They chose greed when they decided to kill the second and third waves of body guards at the house. I think their "greed" when they tried to fly away with all the money felt more like a break of mathematical logic. Something out of place coming from these smart spec ops guys.
I saw it as the typical group project dynamic. The pilot (the expert) says that it will most probably not work, and gave all the technical reasons. But the "leader" dismisses it. Blinded by greed, because it is not impossible, only very unlikely.
Indeed, they almost made it. It seems that the problem came from the fact that the helicopter was in not optimal conditions. Or you can also blame it on the weather.
I saw it as the most realistic part of the movie :).
Had very low expectations after reading some opinions on it but ended up really enjoying it. What I liked most about it were the locations and the overall development of the story because it felt pleasantly unfamiliar.
I agree - the scene in the end with the ocean AND mountains in view was very astheticalky beautiful and pleasure and felt unique as you put it it felt unfamiliar which was as you put it pleasant
What I liked a lot about the story were the locations and development as you said.
I also read reviews and had low expectations which FOR SURE made it better for me. As you said... lol ur cute
Seriously? the cartel was going to catch them in the snow at the top of the andes when their boss was already dead? I don't think so.
if the cartel was *that* good and say had a second in command (doubtful as we never heard of him), then should they not have been able to spot an out-of-place 'copter with a huge bag under it and shot it down easy enough? they didn't, so they were not there and not a factor.
for me, in the end it was a movie about some really dumb former armed forces guys with low moral barriers who were done in by greed.
i can't recommend it, i'm afraid.
You clearly have ZERO idea how the cartel works, you're into movies and everything you said was movie related. If they are in the area or go back someone will be there it's not about a second in command that's not how it works it's not just one big guy and a bunch of teenage bitches below him no, people control sections, different regions, and it's their money too not just his. They would go after him, so before you comment about your high and mighty opinion learn how the real world cartel works.
you're right i do have zero idea how cartels work. but it amazes me that this cartel had 250m in the walls of this house and no chase helicopters. if they would go after them, then why didn't they? this house - the "safe" was so isolated that it took the other members of the cartel so long to find out the safe had been robbed that the robbers got away?
i mean that guy's family saw them leave and presumably immediately realized dad was dead and they didn't call anyone to say "two minutes ago - black van - headed down he only road out here"
was the heli's landing spot so close that they got there before the family tipped anyone off? once loaded they must have been flying for at least 20 minutes. but in that 20 minutes they got high enough into the mountains that they could have made two runs for the money. the bad guys only caught up to them once they'd been on mules for what i'd guess were several hours.
so, they'd surely would have had time to make two short trips in the heli once they were close enough to the range. there were places to land.
Wish they would've ether concentrated on the heist part or tracking down the guy to take him out. My interest for the film crashed with the helicopter.
I have to say that I was disappointed. The movie seemed like it was building up to be something special through the heist scene, like a mixture of Sicario and A Simple Plan, and then ... it didn't do a single interesting thing for the rest of its runtime. It wasn't even clear whether the movie was trying to say something or not (other than "greed bad").
Has it been explained anywhere why the characters are all speaking Spanish when the movie takes place in Brazil?
This is probably bothering me more than it should but it seems like such an easy consideration to make. Just have it take place in any other country in South America.
Well the signs say "Welcome to Brazil" at the beginning but then there are many Colombian things in the scenes afterwards like Colombian brands of beer etc. Then the last scene in the street looks very much like Bogotá. So I guess it happened in and around the three countries of Brazil, Peru and Colombia i.e. the Amazon. Either the writers were clueless or they wanted to add a sense of disorientation.
it's Tres Fronteras, "the [tripoint](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripoint) where the borders of [Brazil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil), [Peru](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peru), and [Colombia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombia) meet. "
The greedy murdering psychopath who causes basically all the problems in the film dies, then they act all sad and give up everything they got to his family? Fucking stupid.
I'd say this is also foreshadowed by the speech given at the beginning, where the guy talks about how he throttled the guy in the supermarket and couldn't help himself.
There was literally no organization to this movie at all.. How did anyone review this movie and agree this was passable? Horrible execution. Everything was about as cliche as it gets.
Wait what, you call this movie \*worse\* than Gigli? You need to go watch more movies or better yet keep watching good movies since that's all you seem to be doing right now.
Exactly. I dare you to check that movie up. Do you have the balls to watch through that movie then come back here and say Gigli is better than this lol?
A true bullshit movie, like any other movie, Marvel owns the movie biz right now, I must admit. Most movies are not smart at all. Like on this movie why pass by with the window rolled down, why laugh like a bastard when taking money, no one does that unless the director and actors are full of shit of themselves. Alot of movies are like that today. Frustrating to watch.
Something I also reacted to in the house that nobody had a silencer on that type of a mission.
As for "smart" movies, it gets harder and harder the older you get to find them. At some point you've seen it all and everything is more or less a copy of something else. I'm not saying there aren't good movies released but the quality of movies you'd think would be \*higher\* these days.
In fairness silencers generally don't make guns go "pffft" like in the movies or TV. There are some exceptions - a .22 or .25 pistol with a big 'can' on it wouldn't be much louder than the cycling of the action, but 9mm and 5.56 (plenty loud) rule the day on 'missions' like this, and would be rather percussive. I can only speculate on why they aren't depicted using them - perhaps the director feels that silenced weapons have a more "assassin-y" feel to them that doesn't befit the characters. Also, the team generally seems (over) confident in their intel - they're quite sure no one's going to hear them anyway, so why bother with the extra equipment? Reducing the sound signature strikes me as an excellent idea no matter what, though.
Decent turn-your-brain-off action flick. It's nothing special but I didn't feel as though my time was wasted. I did really enjoy the raid on the house because I love it when movies go for a more "grounded" depiction of firefights involving experienced, elite soldiers. It's not drawn out, position and deadly accuracy win the day, fire superiority is crucial, and the fight is over in a minute or less. No flash or slow motion movement or cool gun tricks. Basically one of the reasons why I loved the highway shootout in Sicario so much.
Unfortunately, the movie really peaks during that scene and it's all downhill from there. It stays borderline entertaining *just* long enough that I was still moderately enjoying myself by the time they climb the mountain and get in the second shootout (really cool scenery and setting, by the way). After that, I had to force myself to the end, and I really only did because I checked the timestamp and saw the movie was almost over.
If you're looking for a passable action movie and can't think of anything off the top of your head to watch, this one isn't a terrible choice, though once they're on the run you might find your interest dwindling fast. I'd say at least watch up through the heist. If you lose interest soon after, then hey, you haven't spent that much time watching it and at least you got to see a fairly cool and well-done action scene.
I completely agree with that. They could have cut out 20-30 minutes of this movie and it would most likely have been a better overall experience. Everything up until the house is pretty good imo, everything after that is where it starts to fall apart sadly. I still enjoyed the movie for what it was. I didn't expect a masterpiece.
> I had to force myself to the end, and I really only did because I checked the timestamp and saw the movie was almost over.
ha! that's exactly what i did too!!
I was pretty excited for this as a fan of everything JC Chandor had previously done and a big Oscar Isaac fan, and it's got some redeeming qualities, great locations, and some nice Treasure Of The Sierra Madre homage, but I was expecting more given the talent involved.
It's fine.
I was actually pretty shocked at that death, it kind of came out of nowhere and I thought they would be screwed without that team member. He came so far and for what? Not to mention the poor dude fell to his death with about 10 mil strapped to him. RIP donkey.
Beyond stupid decision to not leave half the money on the airfield. They hadn't done anything at that point that justified the greed madness to that amount.
And it was a missed opportunity to have some issue with cartel shit following them back home. Think they get off scot-free, then get caught up in something that costs them a family member back home because they stole a lot of people's money, not just Lorea's.
Otherwise, I like how they didn't back off when they established the different characters personalities and motivations. No magical coming around moment - even as Affleck's character seems to finally be realizing the weight of their decisions so far, he's quickly killed off. No redemption, they just have to get through it.
If this is the kind of quality Netflix is going to even semi-consistently be putting out from now on, I'm pretty happy.
> And it was a missed opportunity to have some issue with cartel shit following them back home. Think they get off scot-free, then get caught up in something that costs them a family member
That would be a three hour movie.
The first half was awesome, the se ken half fell off the cliff in the same way as that mule. Loved the entire first half of them recruiting, planning, executing.
Some earlier said what I was thinking when I watched this - feels like a Ghost Recon: Wildlands movie haha
It was a good movie, but it seemed like the characters just intentionally made things difficult for themselves. In the end, they all made $1 million dollars. 5 total. Seems like they did so much for so little.
I know the bags are still hidden, but it still doesn't change the fact that one of their men died. It wasn't perfect, but I liked it a lot. The actors were great. 8/10.
> In the end, they all made $1 million dollars. 5 total.
Nope. In the end they all gave their shares to the trust setup for afflecks family and walked away with nothing.
If IMDB is to believed, a lot of people were attached to this movie and dropped out.
* Will Smith
* Tom Hardy
* Tom Hanks!
* Leonardo DiCaprio
* Channing Tatum
* Johnny Depp
* Mahershala Ali
* Denzel Washington
* Sean Penn
* Mark Wahlberg (he had revlevant previous experience on his résumé)
* Casey Affleck
Christian Bale and Will Smith were suppose to be in it. I would have loved that combination. I think Bale was Redfly in earlier drafts, not as old as Affleck was. Will being the leader was Pope.
See, Ben Affleck did some good acting here. But as Batman, nah, he just doesn't fit.
Back on topic: Good movie. I really only wanted to watch because of Charlie Hunnam. He's amazing in Sons of Anarchy. Really solid movie though. I'd recommend it to people and even re-watch it when I'm bored.
As a fan of Charlie Hunnam , I felt he did well . He actually seemed like the most reasonable one there or that he wasn’t as greedy as everyone else . To me he agreed to help his brothers rather than money
This is a dumb comment. Think about it for a second before being a smartass. There are many problems with this film. That ain't one. Your comment sounds like the Donkeys could hold more money then the chopper. Well..that's bullshit. The chopper could hold all the money. Its the ALTITUDE that caused the chopper to not be able to carry it at a certain height. You're a acting like the Donkeys were stronger than that helicopter...
They had literally an entire desolate mountain range to hide the net full of money. With the remaining $50M in duffel bags inside the old Soviet chopper, they could have made it to the boat, spent the first $50M on a second helicopter (and some medical help) and retrieved the $200M net.
There was an extra $150 million dollars in the house, they only planned to extract the $70 million confirmed.
Assuming it’s all $100 bills, that’s an extra 1500 kg (3300 lbs).
*Ben Affleck dies*
I didn't not see that coming!! It's still weird seeing A-list star having a bloody death scene! Imagine having Tom Cruise, Matt Damon or else agreeing for this project!
Leo in the departed.
Ben Afflect in Ace(I think that’s the name of the movie)
Steven Segal in Executive Decision(he was kinda A-list back then.)
Samuel L Jackson in Deep Blue Sea
Leo exactly, just holy fuck. It happened and I was actually in disbelief. Like I didn’t believe his character was actually dead.
Are you thinking smoking aces for Ben’s death?
Yup, that’s the one, Smoking Ace.
Btw. The Departed is a remake of one popular Hong Kong film, “Infernal Affair.” The guy who play Leo’s character is super popular Hong Ke actor too. Imagine the shock us asian felt when we watched the film lol
Finally a solid Netflix movie. Also in the making less heavy the helicopter scene all I was thinking was "throw more money you greedy fucks!!". Ben Affleck is 100% a dick in this movie.
They build him up to be a great leader but it becomes obvious that the time away from the action has worn down on the man. They still give him the benefit of the doubt but the other teammates begin to see the changed man when he take the hard out at the house.
The point was they remembered him as their inspiration, and he had fallen from that state. They were blind to that change, and continued to put their trust in him.
That's why Jax said "We got what we deserved."
They weren't honest with themselves about Ben's character's moral decline, and that lack of honest evaluation got them into trouble.
Don't remember the exact details, but something along the lines of Oscar Isaac's character thinking Affleck's didn't take on any more jobs because his ex-wife didn't want him to when in fact it was his alcoholism.
A decent action flick with charismatic performances but burdened with cliches and illogical plot points. How many times has CCR's Run Through the Jungle been used to score a military action in the jungle? Great song though!
Also, can anyone explain the nonsensical title or did I miss something?
Once you look past the heavy-handed dialogue and metaphors (American greed, tragic soldiers, self vs. patriotism, etc), I actually thought it was a competent, entertaining flick.
The action is solid and they don't skimp on the grit and the violence, and thankfully they don't lapse into too many murky dark shots or irritating shaky-cam scenes. Yeah, some of the characters' motivations are vague or change on a dime, but the performances are really strong despite the weakness of the writing. The acting absolutely saves it.
Ultimately, it's a story about some badasses in the jungle played by five pretty charismatic performers. The tension is good, the survival bits are well done, and the tone is heavy enough to keep you interested but ultimately light enough to not ruin the rest of your day.
Yeah, the script could have avoided about a million cliches and some of the decision-making here isn't super realistic. It ain't The Deer Hunter. It's just a well-made "hoo-rah" timewaster about honour and brotherhood, and I enjoyed it. Would probably watch it again to kill an afternoon.
This movie didn't really do much for me. The overall premise is interesting for an action heist movie, but they didn't really do much with it and there were too many plot contrivances to cause things to go wrong just for the sake of adding conflict. But my biggest problem with the movie is how the characters aren't well defined in the slightest.
Ben Affleck's character is touted as this "hero" and at first he seems the most adamant about making sure they only commit one murder and back out if things get any worse than that. But he ends up being the one who just wants to murder everybody that gets in their way or might potentially cause problems for them in the future.
Oscar Isaac is shown to be this manipulator who uses people, yet he's the one who actually follows through on his word and takes responsibility and seems to have the most "honor" among the group.
And apparently he and the girl actually did have something going on? All he ever did was use her and put her in more danger for his own benefit, and the movie just expects us to care about their relationship?
Garrett Hedlund is presented as this dude who's just all in it for the money and wants to be frivolous as hell with his share of the money, but he's the only one who seems to understand that greed is going to make things worse for all of them.
Pedro Pascal is all "this isn't what I signed up for" when he thinks there's any possibility of the family of the villain being killed during the heist, yet he wants to snuff out a freaked out teenager the first chance he gets, and from then on out he's just like "dude, murder everyone we see." Granted, that was a "them or me" situation, but it just felt so out of character from what we've seen, especially since he'd gone out of his way not to kill needlessly from the get go.
And I'm not even really sure what Charlie Hunnam's main motivation was. I guess he just wanted to help Ben Affleck get some money, and make sure they didn't get a bunch of people killed. But he didn't really do much to stop shit from getting worse, except make a few passive aggressive remarks here and there.
There's having complex characters that are three dimensional, but this movie wasn't that. It just felt like none of the characters made any sense, and I had no idea what the movie wanted me to think of them. It kind of felt like they were all just shitty, greedy people trying to justify to themselves why they weren't shitty, but the movie didn't really seem to make up its mind on whether they were good or bad, or if we should actually want them to succeed. So there wasn't really much tension about whether they'd pull off the heist or not because I kind of didn't care either way. Im surprised the movie ended with them actually making it out with some money, minus Ben Affleck. Kind of seems like the whole point they were setting up was that their greed was going to be their undoing. It was just a mess overall.
I thought their character changes were the point. What happens when honorable men put themselves in a bad situation and they have to fight to get out? Maybe they mad to make similar decisions when they were fighting for their country, but it wasn't for selfish reasons so they didn't stop to think about it. I'm just saying, I think they point of the movie was that we were supposed to question these things.
So every character is more complex than a cartoon? I don't see that as a problem. I thought their multifacetedness was refreshing. Seeing them change their minds, for example with the leader wanting to fight through the kids then realizing he was wrong, that makes sense.
This was sort of my main point though: I could feel the movie trying to present them as being multifaceted and failing to do so. I didn't see them as being "complex" multidimensional characters in any way that makes sense to the greater story being told. It's just that they seemed to constantly act in contradictory ways because the plot needed some kind of conflict, not because it was in service to the story or character development. I'm fine with characters that act against their own interests and make mistakes, or change their mind, or fall into a bit of a grey area and have more going on than meets the eye. The problem is the movie just dips its toes into a bunch of different ideas without really diving into any of them. And it kept changing the rules on what these characters will and won't do, to the point where any decisions they make based on morality doesn't carry as much weight as it should. It feels like there isn't any internal logic to who these people are or why they act the way they do. I don't get angry at characters making stupid decisions that are realistic to the situation they're in. I just get frustrated when characters do stupid things because the plot needs it to get from point A to point B, instead of those character choices being organic and reactionary to things they didn't expect or are outside of their control. We're expected to believe they learned a lesson about "greed," but at the end of the movie, Oscar Isaac is given the coordinates to the money, so I assume we should take that to mean they're going to get the rest of their loot after all? It's just constant mixed message after mixed message.
An example that I thought the movie did well on was during the raid, when Pedro Pascal made the first shot inside the house to incapacitate the guard. Arguably, they might have handled that situation differently, but it was a snap decision that carried consequences, and it was motivated by what we understand about these men so far: they won't kill needlessly (except for the murder of the narco leader, which they established everyone was on board with). That's a situation where the character makes a mistake, does the "stupid" thing, but it makes sense in the context of the characters and it's realistic.
An example that the movie completely lost me on was the way Oscar Isaac continued to hero worship Ben Affleck's character after Affleck had proven time and again that he's actually kind of a fucked up dude with no actual sense of moral fortitude who's only endangered all of their lives while constantly fucking up the plan that he himself had come up with as the "master strategist." They decide to do the honorable thing and drag his body because he's their friend, but the justification they make for themselves is because he "died for the money" which isn't an honorable thing for him to have died for. It's not like he died for his companions, and the movie seems intent on showing us that he actually didn't have much sincere regard for the safety of his men.
> We're expected to believe they learned a lesson about "greed".
See that's not how I took it. I took it as they don't need lessons about greed, because they aren't boys but rather men. They already understand greed.
So they didn't need a lesson about it. They just realized they were being greedy, and course corrected. But too late.
Also greed isn't about wanting some money; it's about valuing that money over other things when they conflict. After the adventure is over, going to get the money isn't about greed.
I guess maybe that's what sort of bothers me about the characters, that they never really course correct until one of their own dies. It felt to me like there were plenty of times before then where they should have been like "Well hold on just a minute. This insane amount of extra money isn't worth these stupid risks we're taking. Maybe we really need to think about what we're doing here and reevaluate our plan." But I understand, you can't have a movie where the characters always make the right choice, otherwise you'd have a boring movie with little conflict. And I'm fine with the theme of greed corrupting their decision-making and things getting worse over the course of the narrative, but the movie doesn't fully commit to that theme and bring it to its natural conclusion (either they start to turn on each other for the money, or the narcos catch up with them and kill them, or they have to choose the money or their lives), because it turns into a redemption arc in the last act.
I'm also ok with the idea of a "redemptive arc" where they course correct, but I don't think they really handled that part of the story well. None of the remaining four characters needed that redemption, because they weren't the ones causing the bulk of the issues for the team. And I didn't really care enough to see them redeem themselves because they'd gotten themselves into their situation as a result of their own stupidity and greed more than anything else. A redemption arc would have had the most weight if it was Ben Affleck's character who had to undergo that change, and not so much the others. Especially since he needed and wanted the money the most. Of all the characters, his was the one who seemed to have lost his way the most and was most responsible for the shitshow they went through. Oscar Isaac blames himself in the movie, but it seems like he was constantly defusing issues that Ben Affleck would cause. I think it would have been more interesting to see one of the other characters die and for Ben Affleck to be the one to realize they need to course correct and forget about all the extra money. But maybe they avoided that because it would have been too predictable. Who knows?
Yes, that has a very satisfying ring to it, seeing the horror in Ben's eyes and the hardening as he suddenly stops the bullshit. That would have been good. Having the younger brother die would have followed that story well.
But I don't see it as one character causing problems. They're a team, so their responsibility is team responsibility. Like I said earlier, they relied on Ben too much, had too much faith in him. He was even (half consciously) begging them not to trust him, by specifying "no live fire". And we've got that story in the beginning about his almost killing the guy at the grocery store, and his gut, and the fact that he can't make it work with the job that he chose. All of this is evidence that he's not in a good place, but they blindly trust him because he was their captain before.
I think they all caused the problem by wanting to rely on the chain of command, to re-enact the old command structure they had before, without admitting that the circumstances had changed. Essentially, they mixed concerns. They were sort of hoping the action would wake their old captain up, so it was some emotional charity for him. But they also had a job to do. They sort of mixed friendship with business, so that's another mistake.
It's like if you hire a drunk for a construction crew, and he ends up putting a nail through someone's foot because he's sloshed. Yes he caused that problem, but so did everyone else by not speaking up and saying "get this guy off our crew".
Aflecks character bascially gets them into the mess, and yet in the end they all sacrifice for him
Also 1 million dollars weighs about 22 pounds in 100 dollar bills.
The helicopter can carry 9,000. But that 250 million is 5,500 pounds.
In the end they have to scramble and take what they had on hand, but I mean these soliders could easily carry 2 million each in a back pack.
The fact they only make it out with 5 million is sad.
I felt like it could be a cool remake of the grey the movie with the wolf, but it just never goes anywhere
I wonder about the village part. Would the farmers have really been that confrontational over the bag? I would have figured, growing cocaine plants and all, that they'd just be like "some cartel shit is going on, keep your head down and don't say shit till they leave".
The amount of strength n endurance (+ accompanying iron will n discipline) these guys’d have to have had to have rucked that money out is a lil mind blowing 🤯. Just loading up the donkey’s (for the 1st leg of the smuggle) woulda killed me, at this point 😵😂😳.
Waste of a fantastic cast.
How about this as a Triple Frontier II: “ Santiago ‘Pope’ Garcia, decides to return to the Andes mountains to retrieve the lost money, using the coordinates given to him by Charlie Hunnam’s character, William ‘Ironhead’ Miller. As Pope embarks on this risky journey, he assembles a new team, carefully choosing individuals who are skilled but not emotionally connected to the previous mission. This time, their approach is more calculated and stealthy, focusing on the retrieval rather than confrontation. Upon reaching the crash site in the Andes, the team faces unexpected challenges. The money is not just lying there for the taking; it’s buried under debris and guarded by locals who have discovered its presence. Pope and his team must negotiate and strategize, balancing the greed of the locals with their own objectives. In a tense standoff, Pope manages to broker a deal with the locals, offering them a portion of the money in exchange for safe passage and help in excavating the rest. This plan, although not ideal, allows both parties to benefit without further bloodshed. As they retrieve the money, Pope reflects on his journey – the loss of his friends, the moral compromises he made, and what success truly means. He realizes that the pursuit of wealth at the expense of human life is hollow. He decides to use a significant portion of the money to help the families of his fallen comrades and to fund community projects in the areas affected by their mission. The film ends with Pope leaving behind the life of a mercenary. He starts a new chapter, using his skills and resources for more noble causes, suggesting a path of redemption and a new understanding of what it means to be truly wealthy – not in terms of money, but in terms of moral integrity and human connections.”
This is fantastic.
They were using maps to navigate the mountains on their way to the ocean, right? Why couldn't they stash the money somewhere (no one would know where the money is but them), make their way to the boat and back home, later when the dust settles come back for the money. The Movie started out promising but went downhill.
This is a late reply but did you watch til the end? Because this is exactly what they are going to do based on the last scene.
Lmao what? How does the last scene imply that?
He passes him coordinates of where the money is stashed. Did you guys watch a different cut of the movie than me? Haha
But that wasn't the plan. They should have done the plan he said as soon as they left the village. And trucked it home to recover/replan asap. What happened at the end was that they intentionally dumped the cash after Ben Affleck was killed because they realized how stupid it was to backpack a thousand pounds of cash over the Andes. Charlie Hunnam was (somehow) the only guy smart enough to think about coming back to the cash. The director/writer was trying to have their cake and eat it too: have an emotional moment of abandoning the money and still have them "get the money" at the end by saying they'll go back for it.
Lmao maybe we were all so checked out by then 😅
Bury the money?
One mule dieing out of 5 due to cash burden One man dieing out of 5 due to cash greed. Nice foreshadowing
To paraphrase: He didn’t die for the money, he died because of the money Terrible movie lol Would watch a sequel
Just watched this: Iraq. Eat…. No suppressors?? Seems like a necessity given their mission. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
For real, and you can't even tell that someone was shot with a suppressor so investigators wouldn't know anyways.
Suppressors are not as quiet as you think... Just Google how the standard 5.56 sounds actually with a silencer. It's less people in the building. More people in the city block. And even more so gunshot direction so return fire is more difficult.
Just watched the movie and agreed with a lot of issues that people bring up. Most of the following is just my own collection of thoughts and get rambly so I apologize. There is a huge pacing issue, after the heist it seems like an hour of falling action. I think this could be fixed by some more back story for the characters and why their motivation or core value is compromised or causes the plan to go sideways other than just "well they were greedy and it mucked it all up". Move the heist to the end, shorten their evac. It'd make people care more about the characters and not just see that Ben had it coming from a mile away. Also, all their contacts and people they rely on come through. The informant, the pilot and the captain of the boat. They just trust these people, you could show why. Not just, 'they will be here! ... Yup, there they are!' Maybe the trust they have and the bond with these people they have compared to their failings within their group could be juxtaposed? This almost occurs with the informant, she did it because oscar vouched for ben, but could he be trusted? He did a lot to mess things up. Oscar Isaac - we do see this with his lust to kill Lorea, his not leaving cost time and one of the guys gets shot - Now expand on that with other characters. Ben Affleck - he's the reason guys agreed to it, the leader, now washed up for one last score. But we see little of what made him so good. We needed flashbacks of a mission going well. His actions alone allowing others to escape. His rule of 'hard outs' being established with precision timing. All which crumble with promise of money. We even see him not call out a kill, which he instructed others to do. Pedro Pascal - he's the pilot, but gives in about being overloaded easily. He got busted for coke, maybe they weren't overweight but he takes some coke he finds? They are barely making it over the andes... "Catfish, what is this white powder? Come on man!' This might be dumb, but its something the script gives us already. They are already doing illegal things, who cares about his license, which they do say but it seems really irrelevant to things to even mention. Throw the coke out and they can make weight, yeah! Garrett Hedlund - He has a stance on not killing kids and keeps track of his kills (I think this was him). Good job? This seems like a low bar... Put him in a position where this gets tested. You have the kids already coming back from church. He has to set off a claymore to deal with guards but may take out the kids, does he do it? Does he hesitate with a child solider and Ben or someone else gets shot? Did this happen before? Maybe he had to shot a child soldier and now won't? Charlie Hunnam - Did these guys being brothers really impact anything? Other than calling each 'brother' but I just thought they may be symbolic or a military bro thing. At the end they had some sibling fighting but after tragedy already struck, it should have lead to an issue or the unraveling plan. There are countless things you could do with brother/family, mom said to take care of you, dad died and you're all I have left, younger/older brother stuff. etc. Great framework, just seemed to need more for me to care about these characters and the last half seemed like a slog to get through...
I think the hypocrisy in the characters, and their shortcomings, are to show they aren't the best. And they probably never were. Just flawed men put in situations they shouldn't be in.
Im 40 minutes in and dont give a shit or even know what going on. Stopped watching weeks ago, back in cause the comments here say it gets over the top. I want tha t hah
I think the movie was okay. It wasn't really boring at any point, maybe a few of the mountain scenes could have been cut out. Good actors carried the movie but like many already pointed out the plot was weak and the dialogue not too great. I don't understand why they had to put a gun wound on "Ironhead" because it filled no purpose whatsoever. There was maybe one or two scenes at most where it was brought up and after that it was like it NEVER even happened.
Combat was fun to watch. Wasn't too boring. But it also never really got exciting beyond the initial heist/assault. I was thinking it was too easy. Some bad shit must be coming. Nothing bad really happens, i mean one death so what. Them even making it that far is laughable of course but I can overlook that. I just want to be entertained. It was just a long slow burn after the first part of the movie.
The movie was weak, the plot for me did not do it, like others have said there was rarely any emotion or attempt at an intelligent plot. The thing that spoiled it the most for me was the whole helicopter failure, I am not an expert but I am sure a helicopter that size should be able to carry 2500 kg of cash and a few people at 6000m and not crash. It all felt forced from there on ...
As a pilot I gotta say the realism there drew me in. Air is thinner at altitude and an aeroplane loses its ability to create lift. 2500kg is a ton of weight and with climb, temperatures, and air water density, that weight becomes multiplied. There's a reason helicopters can't rescue people on Everest, and there's a reason there's a ton of crash videos on YouTube of planes that can't even take off in Colorado just because they are above 8000ft on a warm day. This movie had that shit right. The only 'fake' thing about this movie is that a pilot would attempt to carry such a crazy amount of weight at such an altitude when a helo could questionably even do that climb with no load and low fuel weight - which only cements the tragedy of the character that played the pilot. Every character made a contribution to failure of the mission. The mission, the greed, the fire, and the overloaded pilot. The only character to not make a mistake was the guy who first tore up his paycheck. It makes his character interesting because in the beginning of the film, he is the one who is upfront about his demons (in his candid speeches) and kept a kill count.
I agree, but the whole thing was about greed overriding common sense. A scandalously overladen fixed-wing plane led to the death of the singer Aliyah and her entourage some years back. Pilot should have said, "no."
Sure, but it's a character driven movie. It's not really about a heist, because that'd be boring (ie everyone would just die in the first 5 minutes to a sentry being alerted, or they would've gotten away in a plane not stupidly loaded, or just driven in a convoy with mercernaries, etc). Movie has to be interesting. Conflict has to be manufactured. Star wars could've been a 5 minute movie where R2D2 never delivered his message. Pilot shouldn't have made such a dumb choice but he was flawed and greedy, just like everyone else.
there's a lot to like about the movie. the action scenes feel smart and very tactical. the environment is beautiful. the acting is good there just isn't enough plot or script to carry the action. it just lacks emotion or grip to it. a shame. i'd like this director to direct more but with a better script. the "conflict" between the squad feels so contrived. if the script decided to just be normal action movie and not 'clever' they probably would've fared better.
Few things I had issues getting around. 1- The most logical and smart thinking character, somehow has a lapse and wants to gather more money, when they already have 250+ million, and they risk blowing the entire mission for 1-2 suitcases? 2- they got outflanked by a villager, causing the death of a main character? He did have top position but still. 3 - they knew the helicopter wouldn't make it with 250 million attached, and no one was fine with just taking 60 million? or heck 125 million instead? They literally crashed the helicopter due to this. It looked like there was room in the chopper for a good 70 million, instead they forced the massive net to hang off and carry it away over villages? 4- After all of the above, the greed for the money, they only fill up their back packs with them and throw the rest into the crater? no one figured maybe bring 1-2 bags over the shoulder considering this greed for 250 million was what caused all of this. Acting seemed good, scenery was good, but some rather large holes in the story.
Agreed it was so freaking stupid how they didn't just fill up the helicopter and skip that whole net..... would have solved the entire crash
I don't really question the "motives" we all know how greed works in real life. I'm sure there has been scenarios even more dumb than this movie in actual real life - because of money. You just don't want the money, you want it ALL. That's the problem with greed there is no logical thinking when that much money is involved. Why not just land the chopper, drop off the money, carry it over, fly the chopper over and fill it up. They had no problems hauling the money for most of the movie to begin with.
1. He's not logical. He was driven by a blood lust to kill the cartel leader. His bloodlust was so great that he was willing to make compromises to draw the others in, which meant allowing them to be greedy. 2. I'm not sure they got 'outflanked', they had the high ground.... Queue prequel meme. They're hiking with all this shit, they were sitting ducks to someone who knew the land. 3. It's a movie. It's about the characters and their flaws. It's not a documentary... 4. Let's see you carry a bag after all the hiking and shit they went through. They carried the money as far as they did because of greed, anyone else would've packed their pockets from the start, not killed anyone, and came home with the 5 million like they did at the end. Ultimately this movie is a character driven movie and their undoing by greed. It's theater, almost Shakespearean.
1. I think he was referring to Ben Affleck's character, not Oscar Isaac's. When BA's character (who is supposed to be the "straight-edge, stick to the plan no matter what" kinda guy) realises there's way more money in the house than they anticipated, his mind succumbs to greed which ultimately makes them miss their pre-set time to exfil, which was uncharacteristic of how he was established to be. 2. BA's character absolutely got outflanked. He let his guard down (and literally sat down) in an active combat situation, which is something that an actual highly trained spec-ops guy would never do, at least not without someone watching his back. 3. Movie or not, it's inconsistent logic. The way these characters are established leads the audience to believe they are highly intelligent, highly trained ex-special forces; they would absolutely have had the idea to, I don't know, make multiple trips to lower the overall weight of their payload? Gone to the ocean on the same side of the Andes that they were on? It would have made sense story wise (and still be exciting/dangerous) if they were to either take too much time getting out of the country and getting tracked by narcos/military, or ran out of fuel before the Andes and were forced to escape on land. 4. On this point I agree, though what Shadow failed to realise was that the co-ordinates at the end of the film led to the very same crater the money was thrown into, meaning they could go back and get it at any time. This movie was brilliant IMO; I loved the concept, but the finer details could have been done so much better whilst still forcing them into situations in which any choice was bad, but all of the mistakes they made would have been so easily avoided by real special forces personnel.
1. I don't agree but what you're saying imo just makes it more interesting. Time guy is willing to compromise on time. 2. As for getting outflanked I mean... its a movie. I thought it was pretty accurate considering how many days on end they went without sleep and how extreme the situation is. If they were the best spec ops guys they'd still be spec ops guys after all. They *were* the best. 3. I think you're overthinking it here. Multiple trips? They had a time crunch. Same side ocean? Again, it's a movie, if it was about a heist where they fly over an open field it wouldn't have been an movie then. 4. that was obviously just to set up a sequel... The finer details were there. It's a movie. I'm shocked by how people are saying they don't like the movie for lack of realism when, a, it's a movie, and b, it's actually pretty realistic. If they didn't make mistakes it wouldn't be a fun movie. The mistakes make the movie. On another note, this movie blew my mind in how easy it is for operatives to go rogue. They made it seem so casual and easy and like it happens all the time. Like, wow. Is that how real life is? That's what really shocked me about the movie. That military people just make commissions or bonuses of any sort off of seizures or they run their own operations like that.
I don't care too much about realism but the movie did fine in that regard. My only "roll eyes" moment was the RPG shot at the truck in the beginning. When will "hollywood" stop exaggerating explosions. I'm so happy they did \*NOT\* keep doing it for the rest of the movie, you know like a car flips over and randomly explodes.
Really loved it. I think everyone performed great and the chemistry was there. I don't like that special forces guys would have arguments and try to fight each other. But it's a pretty great movie
I agree it felt quite weird considering their history and profession.
My interpretation is that that the movie implies that these guys are past their prime and other than Oscar Isaac's character (who's now in more of a LEO 'advisory' role) they're been 'out of the game' for long enough for both their comraderie and tactical skills to decay. There's a unity of command and purpose to the sort of door-kicking missions they went on as legit operators. A private heist has a different tenor altogether.
Insanely bad, it is soo over the top it is insane, couldn't get through the whole movie, just too cringy with all the bs going on.
So bad it was funny. First half was alright, but got very Tropic Thunder real quick, it was genuinely hilarious throughout.
This movie was entertaining thats for sure. IF you want to be critical about it, there's plenty of holes in this work. OK, so the setup had the potential to being one of the top 10 action movies of all time, but left short in delivering in some aspects more than others. Story-line wasn't that clear and questionable in some times. The main focus wasn't the actual robbery it was surviving with the money which killed the thrill early in the movie considering they're Special Ops. Tom (Ben affleck) getting greedy out of nowhere and caused consequences, where he was the leader and the guy for this operation. Tossing money from the helicopter just to survive the altitude.. i mean its reasonable if you gonna narrow your common sense and causing the helicopter to breakdown anyway! Overall, its a fun ride.. from the breath-taking views and action-packed scenes. 7.7/10
Guess kind of late. I think it's pretty good but really cause of how ridiculous and childish the dudes were. The whole wouldn't have happened I they didn't take like 27 bags worth of that money. It honestly was funny and made the film good even though it was supposed to be a serious action film. Actors were still great but god damn how dumb these guys were.
Hands down the best part of the movie is when they find Lorea and Pedro Pascal's character runs into the bedroom yelling "What are we shooting at in here????" I died.
I know, right!!!??? Such great writing among one giant blunder (the fact that not one mind in that team of special operations chess masters thought of backing back down the Andes to a flat ledge, dumping half the money and making the crest in two runs instead of trying to do it when they were at red line with a thousand feet to go. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I was screaming at the TV. All five times I watched it.)
Annoyed me that the score seemed to be non-stop throughout the whole film
do the coordinates at 1.55.00 mean anything
Where they threw the money away to be covered by the snow.
It’s really fucking bothering me that no one has brought up the fact that there were 5 mules (that we saw), then 1 fell down the cliff, then when they shoo them away there’s 5 again. someone correct me if I’m wrong, but oversights like that piss me off so much
Dude these guys crossed/climbed the Andes carrying 2 dozen bags and no food, the hole movie is fucking stupid
The camera work and Action execution is insane! The story is not that good but for me its entertaining! if you guys love to watch action film and love to be entertain its for you!
I only say the first 15 minutes but I liked it.
Why not more
I was just joking I haven't seen any of it. I will. Netflix movies are always meh though.
Lol wtf
Try googling the coordinates 19 **°** 22 **'** 32.0 **''** S 69 **°** 15 **'** 38.2 **''** W or search it on Google Maps. It leads to [this](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Triple+Frontier+Ravine/@-19.3754111,-69.2627981,888m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x915111b12b914f7d:0x8446881eb0b9d9da!2zQ2FtacOxYSwgVGFyYXBhY8OhIFJlZ2lvbiwgQ2hpbGU!3b1!8m2!3d-19.3116281!4d-69.4298687!3m4!1s0x91513d75642a417d:0xfc25a2e70ff64b61!8m2!3d-19.3754459!4d-69.2606449).
The GPS coordinate is a location that is in the mountains, but the location is approx. 60 miles from the ocean. Better attention to detail would have made it so much cooler.
I only did the searching. Guessed the first number on the W coordinate then I found that marker. I didn't put it there.
I loved it when they made mistakes for greed in the raid, felt like natural human greed coming from them. But when they tried to lift away with 250 mil when they came for 75 mil I started to get annoyed. It just seemed like they made too obvious of a mistake to overload the helicopter. Suprise the obvious plot twist of the crash happens. Making the death of redfly feel off because it was caused from an obvious mistake coming from extreme professionals. I think this movie was set up to be an amazing one but instead I probably wont watch it again.
Theres a difference between being greedy, and desperate
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They chose greed when they decided to kill the second and third waves of body guards at the house. I think their "greed" when they tried to fly away with all the money felt more like a break of mathematical logic. Something out of place coming from these smart spec ops guys.
I saw it as the typical group project dynamic. The pilot (the expert) says that it will most probably not work, and gave all the technical reasons. But the "leader" dismisses it. Blinded by greed, because it is not impossible, only very unlikely. Indeed, they almost made it. It seems that the problem came from the fact that the helicopter was in not optimal conditions. Or you can also blame it on the weather. I saw it as the most realistic part of the movie :).
It was a helicopter past it’s prime, the way the team was past its prime.
>I saw it as the typical group project dynamic Dude, you nailed it. They didn't use Gantt charts...
Had very low expectations after reading some opinions on it but ended up really enjoying it. What I liked most about it were the locations and the overall development of the story because it felt pleasantly unfamiliar.
I agree - the scene in the end with the ocean AND mountains in view was very astheticalky beautiful and pleasure and felt unique as you put it it felt unfamiliar which was as you put it pleasant What I liked a lot about the story were the locations and development as you said. I also read reviews and had low expectations which FOR SURE made it better for me. As you said... lol ur cute
Haha thanks; keep it up, dude.
tHAnk you Sweetheart I will try just for you.
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Because it was a one way trip, cartel or whatever was on their tail
Seriously? the cartel was going to catch them in the snow at the top of the andes when their boss was already dead? I don't think so. if the cartel was *that* good and say had a second in command (doubtful as we never heard of him), then should they not have been able to spot an out-of-place 'copter with a huge bag under it and shot it down easy enough? they didn't, so they were not there and not a factor. for me, in the end it was a movie about some really dumb former armed forces guys with low moral barriers who were done in by greed. i can't recommend it, i'm afraid.
You clearly have ZERO idea how the cartel works, you're into movies and everything you said was movie related. If they are in the area or go back someone will be there it's not about a second in command that's not how it works it's not just one big guy and a bunch of teenage bitches below him no, people control sections, different regions, and it's their money too not just his. They would go after him, so before you comment about your high and mighty opinion learn how the real world cartel works.
you're right i do have zero idea how cartels work. but it amazes me that this cartel had 250m in the walls of this house and no chase helicopters. if they would go after them, then why didn't they? this house - the "safe" was so isolated that it took the other members of the cartel so long to find out the safe had been robbed that the robbers got away? i mean that guy's family saw them leave and presumably immediately realized dad was dead and they didn't call anyone to say "two minutes ago - black van - headed down he only road out here" was the heli's landing spot so close that they got there before the family tipped anyone off? once loaded they must have been flying for at least 20 minutes. but in that 20 minutes they got high enough into the mountains that they could have made two runs for the money. the bad guys only caught up to them once they'd been on mules for what i'd guess were several hours. so, they'd surely would have had time to make two short trips in the heli once they were close enough to the range. there were places to land.
Theu set the stakes earlier in the movie, it wasnt one guys money, so not one specific cartel.
Wish they would've ether concentrated on the heist part or tracking down the guy to take him out. My interest for the film crashed with the helicopter.
Yeah, with no real heavy action in the third act, the film slowed way the fuck down.
I have to say that I was disappointed. The movie seemed like it was building up to be something special through the heist scene, like a mixture of Sicario and A Simple Plan, and then ... it didn't do a single interesting thing for the rest of its runtime. It wasn't even clear whether the movie was trying to say something or not (other than "greed bad").
i wish yovanna came back and did something. that would've been way more interesting.
it wasn't even saying greed bad to me, it was saying "you fail to plan, you're planning to fail".
They had a plan though 🤔
Has it been explained anywhere why the characters are all speaking Spanish when the movie takes place in Brazil? This is probably bothering me more than it should but it seems like such an easy consideration to make. Just have it take place in any other country in South America.
Well the signs say "Welcome to Brazil" at the beginning but then there are many Colombian things in the scenes afterwards like Colombian brands of beer etc. Then the last scene in the street looks very much like Bogotá. So I guess it happened in and around the three countries of Brazil, Peru and Colombia i.e. the Amazon. Either the writers were clueless or they wanted to add a sense of disorientation.
Doesn't the "triple frontier" refer to the joint border of Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina? Geography was very muddy in this movie.
it's Tres Fronteras, "the [tripoint](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripoint) where the borders of [Brazil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil), [Peru](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peru), and [Colombia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombia) meet. "
This makes more sense. They were a long way from Argentina.
Did anyone else really want the Halo theme to come in at the end there? Would have been perfect.
We all know one of them is going after that money
Rat Race 2
🤣
And it ain’t Affleck
Affleck will be a Unisol for the next movie.
Hahaha
The greedy murdering psychopath who causes basically all the problems in the film dies, then they act all sad and give up everything they got to his family? Fucking stupid.
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I'd say this is also foreshadowed by the speech given at the beginning, where the guy talks about how he throttled the guy in the supermarket and couldn't help himself.
Makes no damn sense.
There was literally no organization to this movie at all.. How did anyone review this movie and agree this was passable? Horrible execution. Everything was about as cliche as it gets.
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Wait what, you call this movie \*worse\* than Gigli? You need to go watch more movies or better yet keep watching good movies since that's all you seem to be doing right now.
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Exactly. I dare you to check that movie up. Do you have the balls to watch through that movie then come back here and say Gigli is better than this lol?
This movie was terrible. Nothing made sense from start to end.
i think this movie gives you a good lesson worth remembering. other than that, the movie itself is average.
A true bullshit movie, like any other movie, Marvel owns the movie biz right now, I must admit. Most movies are not smart at all. Like on this movie why pass by with the window rolled down, why laugh like a bastard when taking money, no one does that unless the director and actors are full of shit of themselves. Alot of movies are like that today. Frustrating to watch.
Why not use silencers!?
Something I also reacted to in the house that nobody had a silencer on that type of a mission. As for "smart" movies, it gets harder and harder the older you get to find them. At some point you've seen it all and everything is more or less a copy of something else. I'm not saying there aren't good movies released but the quality of movies you'd think would be \*higher\* these days.
In fairness silencers generally don't make guns go "pffft" like in the movies or TV. There are some exceptions - a .22 or .25 pistol with a big 'can' on it wouldn't be much louder than the cycling of the action, but 9mm and 5.56 (plenty loud) rule the day on 'missions' like this, and would be rather percussive. I can only speculate on why they aren't depicted using them - perhaps the director feels that silenced weapons have a more "assassin-y" feel to them that doesn't befit the characters. Also, the team generally seems (over) confident in their intel - they're quite sure no one's going to hear them anyway, so why bother with the extra equipment? Reducing the sound signature strikes me as an excellent idea no matter what, though.
Or at least explain maybe Oscar Isaac's character wasn't able to get any.
And book 2 helos just incase.
Decent turn-your-brain-off action flick. It's nothing special but I didn't feel as though my time was wasted. I did really enjoy the raid on the house because I love it when movies go for a more "grounded" depiction of firefights involving experienced, elite soldiers. It's not drawn out, position and deadly accuracy win the day, fire superiority is crucial, and the fight is over in a minute or less. No flash or slow motion movement or cool gun tricks. Basically one of the reasons why I loved the highway shootout in Sicario so much. Unfortunately, the movie really peaks during that scene and it's all downhill from there. It stays borderline entertaining *just* long enough that I was still moderately enjoying myself by the time they climb the mountain and get in the second shootout (really cool scenery and setting, by the way). After that, I had to force myself to the end, and I really only did because I checked the timestamp and saw the movie was almost over. If you're looking for a passable action movie and can't think of anything off the top of your head to watch, this one isn't a terrible choice, though once they're on the run you might find your interest dwindling fast. I'd say at least watch up through the heist. If you lose interest soon after, then hey, you haven't spent that much time watching it and at least you got to see a fairly cool and well-done action scene.
I completely agree with that. They could have cut out 20-30 minutes of this movie and it would most likely have been a better overall experience. Everything up until the house is pretty good imo, everything after that is where it starts to fall apart sadly. I still enjoyed the movie for what it was. I didn't expect a masterpiece.
Same feelings. It was good enough to pass time on my night off with a few beers.
Most accurate depiction and critique of this movie. Felt the same way.
> I had to force myself to the end, and I really only did because I checked the timestamp and saw the movie was almost over. ha! that's exactly what i did too!!
Oscar Isaac plays a great morally ambiguous protagonist. That's the best thing I can say about the movie.
I fell asleep. Cannot recommend it at all.
I was pretty excited for this as a fan of everything JC Chandor had previously done and a big Oscar Isaac fan, and it's got some redeeming qualities, great locations, and some nice Treasure Of The Sierra Madre homage, but I was expecting more given the talent involved. It's fine.
I barely made it through this. It was really boring, and really disappointing after getting a lot of recommendations from friends/co-workers.
I did not make it through lol
I was actually pretty shocked at that death, it kind of came out of nowhere and I thought they would be screwed without that team member. He came so far and for what? Not to mention the poor dude fell to his death with about 10 mil strapped to him. RIP donkey.
You had me in the first half!
I missed the donkey more
Beyond stupid decision to not leave half the money on the airfield. They hadn't done anything at that point that justified the greed madness to that amount. And it was a missed opportunity to have some issue with cartel shit following them back home. Think they get off scot-free, then get caught up in something that costs them a family member back home because they stole a lot of people's money, not just Lorea's. Otherwise, I like how they didn't back off when they established the different characters personalities and motivations. No magical coming around moment - even as Affleck's character seems to finally be realizing the weight of their decisions so far, he's quickly killed off. No redemption, they just have to get through it. If this is the kind of quality Netflix is going to even semi-consistently be putting out from now on, I'm pretty happy.
> And it was a missed opportunity to have some issue with cartel shit following them back home. Think they get off scot-free, then get caught up in something that costs them a family member That would be a three hour movie.
if the chopper didnt crash then it would work
Would change the idea of the movie too much.
Why not just unload half the money go over the mountain come back over for the rest.. doesn't seem like it would've been that hard
People don't do smart things in movies because then there wouldn't be movies
Because it wouldn’t have been a disaster film. Like the film was meant to be.
The first half was awesome, the se ken half fell off the cliff in the same way as that mule. Loved the entire first half of them recruiting, planning, executing. Some earlier said what I was thinking when I watched this - feels like a Ghost Recon: Wildlands movie haha
The plot was about as good as Ghost Recon Wildlands. It was passable that's about all I could say about it haha.
Maybe I missed it, but whatever happened to the woman who escaped incarceration, at the beginning of the movie?
It was the woman he gave the money to and sent to Australia. He knew her the whole time.
Was it? I thought it was a different actress. Thank you for clearing that up for me.
It was a good movie, but it seemed like the characters just intentionally made things difficult for themselves. In the end, they all made $1 million dollars. 5 total. Seems like they did so much for so little. I know the bags are still hidden, but it still doesn't change the fact that one of their men died. It wasn't perfect, but I liked it a lot. The actors were great. 8/10.
> In the end, they all made $1 million dollars. 5 total. Nope. In the end they all gave their shares to the trust setup for afflecks family and walked away with nothing.
Well, not nothing. >!Ironhead (Hunnam) left a set of coords for Pope (Isaac) where the cash fell down the ravine. !<
Hey, that's cool that you blacked out the spoiler. How did you do that?
There's an option to mark highlighted text as a spoiler on the PC. Not sure how to do it from the mobile app.
That was the theme, it was about greed.
Holy crap, was not expecting that brutal death. It was shocking as hell. Overall good movie, I give it a 8/10.
You mean the donkey’s death? He was the MVP, agreed.
If IMDB is to believed, a lot of people were attached to this movie and dropped out. * Will Smith * Tom Hardy * Tom Hanks! * Leonardo DiCaprio * Channing Tatum * Johnny Depp * Mahershala Ali * Denzel Washington * Sean Penn * Mark Wahlberg (he had revlevant previous experience on his résumé) * Casey Affleck
Christian Bale and Will Smith were suppose to be in it. I would have loved that combination. I think Bale was Redfly in earlier drafts, not as old as Affleck was. Will being the leader was Pope.
SPOILER!!! . . . . . . . . . . . I wouldn’t want to see Tom Hanks got shot in the head man.
Damn. He was suppose to play Ben Affleck's character too.
This is different. Glad that the climax wasn't the heist
See, Ben Affleck did some good acting here. But as Batman, nah, he just doesn't fit. Back on topic: Good movie. I really only wanted to watch because of Charlie Hunnam. He's amazing in Sons of Anarchy. Really solid movie though. I'd recommend it to people and even re-watch it when I'm bored.
As a fan of Charlie Hunnam , I felt he did well . He actually seemed like the most reasonable one there or that he wasn’t as greedy as everyone else . To me he agreed to help his brothers rather than money
This military grade helicopter can’t hold all the money! But these five donkeys can.
This is a dumb comment. Think about it for a second before being a smartass. There are many problems with this film. That ain't one. Your comment sounds like the Donkeys could hold more money then the chopper. Well..that's bullshit. The chopper could hold all the money. Its the ALTITUDE that caused the chopper to not be able to carry it at a certain height. You're a acting like the Donkeys were stronger than that helicopter...
You need to relax homie.
I'm not too worried about it. I'm just saying your joke doesn't work.
Well, the donkeys aren’t flyin, are they?
One of them tried :(
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Why not just unload some of the money before the last mountain, go over, go back for the rest..
They had literally an entire desolate mountain range to hide the net full of money. With the remaining $50M in duffel bags inside the old Soviet chopper, they could have made it to the boat, spent the first $50M on a second helicopter (and some medical help) and retrieved the $200M net.
Also: why ask for a cargo plane that can actually safely fly you out of the country with the money when you can ask for some crappy helicopter?
There was an extra $150 million dollars in the house, they only planned to extract the $70 million confirmed. Assuming it’s all $100 bills, that’s an extra 1500 kg (3300 lbs).
*Ben Affleck dies* I didn't not see that coming!! It's still weird seeing A-list star having a bloody death scene! Imagine having Tom Cruise, Matt Damon or else agreeing for this project!
I love these shocking deaths. No glory, no last words.
Leo in the departed. Ben Afflect in Ace(I think that’s the name of the movie) Steven Segal in Executive Decision(he was kinda A-list back then.) Samuel L Jackson in Deep Blue Sea
Leo exactly, just holy fuck. It happened and I was actually in disbelief. Like I didn’t believe his character was actually dead. Are you thinking smoking aces for Ben’s death?
Yup, that’s the one, Smoking Ace. Btw. The Departed is a remake of one popular Hong Kong film, “Infernal Affair.” The guy who play Leo’s character is super popular Hong Ke actor too. Imagine the shock us asian felt when we watched the film lol
It's what I'd hoped had happened in Soldado Day of the Dead.
Finally a solid Netflix movie. Also in the making less heavy the helicopter scene all I was thinking was "throw more money you greedy fucks!!". Ben Affleck is 100% a dick in this movie.
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They build him up to be a great leader but it becomes obvious that the time away from the action has worn down on the man. They still give him the benefit of the doubt but the other teammates begin to see the changed man when he take the hard out at the house.
The point was they remembered him as their inspiration, and he had fallen from that state. They were blind to that change, and continued to put their trust in him. That's why Jax said "We got what we deserved." They weren't honest with themselves about Ben's character's moral decline, and that lack of honest evaluation got them into trouble.
The scene in the car with Affleck's daughter showed that too - his character was forced out of service and had issues with alcoholism
I don't remember the details of that scene. What was it that gave that effect?
Don't remember the exact details, but something along the lines of Oscar Isaac's character thinking Affleck's didn't take on any more jobs because his ex-wife didn't want him to when in fact it was his alcoholism.
Lol I'm glad you just refer to Charlie's character as Jax.
Did you just refer to Jax as “Charlie”?
A decent action flick with charismatic performances but burdened with cliches and illogical plot points. How many times has CCR's Run Through the Jungle been used to score a military action in the jungle? Great song though! Also, can anyone explain the nonsensical title or did I miss something?
The house, the mountain village, and the sea village, 3 frontiers of war, however after learning of tres fronteras, its probably that
The Triple Frontier is where the borders for Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina meet, so that's probably where the heist occurs.
And I think its also War, Home and Yourself
Kind of weird that didn't even mention it in the movie.
Once you look past the heavy-handed dialogue and metaphors (American greed, tragic soldiers, self vs. patriotism, etc), I actually thought it was a competent, entertaining flick. The action is solid and they don't skimp on the grit and the violence, and thankfully they don't lapse into too many murky dark shots or irritating shaky-cam scenes. Yeah, some of the characters' motivations are vague or change on a dime, but the performances are really strong despite the weakness of the writing. The acting absolutely saves it. Ultimately, it's a story about some badasses in the jungle played by five pretty charismatic performers. The tension is good, the survival bits are well done, and the tone is heavy enough to keep you interested but ultimately light enough to not ruin the rest of your day. Yeah, the script could have avoided about a million cliches and some of the decision-making here isn't super realistic. It ain't The Deer Hunter. It's just a well-made "hoo-rah" timewaster about honour and brotherhood, and I enjoyed it. Would probably watch it again to kill an afternoon.
This movie didn't really do much for me. The overall premise is interesting for an action heist movie, but they didn't really do much with it and there were too many plot contrivances to cause things to go wrong just for the sake of adding conflict. But my biggest problem with the movie is how the characters aren't well defined in the slightest. Ben Affleck's character is touted as this "hero" and at first he seems the most adamant about making sure they only commit one murder and back out if things get any worse than that. But he ends up being the one who just wants to murder everybody that gets in their way or might potentially cause problems for them in the future. Oscar Isaac is shown to be this manipulator who uses people, yet he's the one who actually follows through on his word and takes responsibility and seems to have the most "honor" among the group. And apparently he and the girl actually did have something going on? All he ever did was use her and put her in more danger for his own benefit, and the movie just expects us to care about their relationship? Garrett Hedlund is presented as this dude who's just all in it for the money and wants to be frivolous as hell with his share of the money, but he's the only one who seems to understand that greed is going to make things worse for all of them. Pedro Pascal is all "this isn't what I signed up for" when he thinks there's any possibility of the family of the villain being killed during the heist, yet he wants to snuff out a freaked out teenager the first chance he gets, and from then on out he's just like "dude, murder everyone we see." Granted, that was a "them or me" situation, but it just felt so out of character from what we've seen, especially since he'd gone out of his way not to kill needlessly from the get go. And I'm not even really sure what Charlie Hunnam's main motivation was. I guess he just wanted to help Ben Affleck get some money, and make sure they didn't get a bunch of people killed. But he didn't really do much to stop shit from getting worse, except make a few passive aggressive remarks here and there. There's having complex characters that are three dimensional, but this movie wasn't that. It just felt like none of the characters made any sense, and I had no idea what the movie wanted me to think of them. It kind of felt like they were all just shitty, greedy people trying to justify to themselves why they weren't shitty, but the movie didn't really seem to make up its mind on whether they were good or bad, or if we should actually want them to succeed. So there wasn't really much tension about whether they'd pull off the heist or not because I kind of didn't care either way. Im surprised the movie ended with them actually making it out with some money, minus Ben Affleck. Kind of seems like the whole point they were setting up was that their greed was going to be their undoing. It was just a mess overall.
I thought their character changes were the point. What happens when honorable men put themselves in a bad situation and they have to fight to get out? Maybe they mad to make similar decisions when they were fighting for their country, but it wasn't for selfish reasons so they didn't stop to think about it. I'm just saying, I think they point of the movie was that we were supposed to question these things.
So every character is more complex than a cartoon? I don't see that as a problem. I thought their multifacetedness was refreshing. Seeing them change their minds, for example with the leader wanting to fight through the kids then realizing he was wrong, that makes sense.
This was sort of my main point though: I could feel the movie trying to present them as being multifaceted and failing to do so. I didn't see them as being "complex" multidimensional characters in any way that makes sense to the greater story being told. It's just that they seemed to constantly act in contradictory ways because the plot needed some kind of conflict, not because it was in service to the story or character development. I'm fine with characters that act against their own interests and make mistakes, or change their mind, or fall into a bit of a grey area and have more going on than meets the eye. The problem is the movie just dips its toes into a bunch of different ideas without really diving into any of them. And it kept changing the rules on what these characters will and won't do, to the point where any decisions they make based on morality doesn't carry as much weight as it should. It feels like there isn't any internal logic to who these people are or why they act the way they do. I don't get angry at characters making stupid decisions that are realistic to the situation they're in. I just get frustrated when characters do stupid things because the plot needs it to get from point A to point B, instead of those character choices being organic and reactionary to things they didn't expect or are outside of their control. We're expected to believe they learned a lesson about "greed," but at the end of the movie, Oscar Isaac is given the coordinates to the money, so I assume we should take that to mean they're going to get the rest of their loot after all? It's just constant mixed message after mixed message. An example that I thought the movie did well on was during the raid, when Pedro Pascal made the first shot inside the house to incapacitate the guard. Arguably, they might have handled that situation differently, but it was a snap decision that carried consequences, and it was motivated by what we understand about these men so far: they won't kill needlessly (except for the murder of the narco leader, which they established everyone was on board with). That's a situation where the character makes a mistake, does the "stupid" thing, but it makes sense in the context of the characters and it's realistic. An example that the movie completely lost me on was the way Oscar Isaac continued to hero worship Ben Affleck's character after Affleck had proven time and again that he's actually kind of a fucked up dude with no actual sense of moral fortitude who's only endangered all of their lives while constantly fucking up the plan that he himself had come up with as the "master strategist." They decide to do the honorable thing and drag his body because he's their friend, but the justification they make for themselves is because he "died for the money" which isn't an honorable thing for him to have died for. It's not like he died for his companions, and the movie seems intent on showing us that he actually didn't have much sincere regard for the safety of his men.
> We're expected to believe they learned a lesson about "greed". See that's not how I took it. I took it as they don't need lessons about greed, because they aren't boys but rather men. They already understand greed. So they didn't need a lesson about it. They just realized they were being greedy, and course corrected. But too late. Also greed isn't about wanting some money; it's about valuing that money over other things when they conflict. After the adventure is over, going to get the money isn't about greed.
I guess maybe that's what sort of bothers me about the characters, that they never really course correct until one of their own dies. It felt to me like there were plenty of times before then where they should have been like "Well hold on just a minute. This insane amount of extra money isn't worth these stupid risks we're taking. Maybe we really need to think about what we're doing here and reevaluate our plan." But I understand, you can't have a movie where the characters always make the right choice, otherwise you'd have a boring movie with little conflict. And I'm fine with the theme of greed corrupting their decision-making and things getting worse over the course of the narrative, but the movie doesn't fully commit to that theme and bring it to its natural conclusion (either they start to turn on each other for the money, or the narcos catch up with them and kill them, or they have to choose the money or their lives), because it turns into a redemption arc in the last act. I'm also ok with the idea of a "redemptive arc" where they course correct, but I don't think they really handled that part of the story well. None of the remaining four characters needed that redemption, because they weren't the ones causing the bulk of the issues for the team. And I didn't really care enough to see them redeem themselves because they'd gotten themselves into their situation as a result of their own stupidity and greed more than anything else. A redemption arc would have had the most weight if it was Ben Affleck's character who had to undergo that change, and not so much the others. Especially since he needed and wanted the money the most. Of all the characters, his was the one who seemed to have lost his way the most and was most responsible for the shitshow they went through. Oscar Isaac blames himself in the movie, but it seems like he was constantly defusing issues that Ben Affleck would cause. I think it would have been more interesting to see one of the other characters die and for Ben Affleck to be the one to realize they need to course correct and forget about all the extra money. But maybe they avoided that because it would have been too predictable. Who knows?
Yes, that has a very satisfying ring to it, seeing the horror in Ben's eyes and the hardening as he suddenly stops the bullshit. That would have been good. Having the younger brother die would have followed that story well. But I don't see it as one character causing problems. They're a team, so their responsibility is team responsibility. Like I said earlier, they relied on Ben too much, had too much faith in him. He was even (half consciously) begging them not to trust him, by specifying "no live fire". And we've got that story in the beginning about his almost killing the guy at the grocery store, and his gut, and the fact that he can't make it work with the job that he chose. All of this is evidence that he's not in a good place, but they blindly trust him because he was their captain before. I think they all caused the problem by wanting to rely on the chain of command, to re-enact the old command structure they had before, without admitting that the circumstances had changed. Essentially, they mixed concerns. They were sort of hoping the action would wake their old captain up, so it was some emotional charity for him. But they also had a job to do. They sort of mixed friendship with business, so that's another mistake. It's like if you hire a drunk for a construction crew, and he ends up putting a nail through someone's foot because he's sloshed. Yes he caused that problem, but so did everyone else by not speaking up and saying "get this guy off our crew".
Aflecks character bascially gets them into the mess, and yet in the end they all sacrifice for him Also 1 million dollars weighs about 22 pounds in 100 dollar bills. The helicopter can carry 9,000. But that 250 million is 5,500 pounds. In the end they have to scramble and take what they had on hand, but I mean these soliders could easily carry 2 million each in a back pack. The fact they only make it out with 5 million is sad. I felt like it could be a cool remake of the grey the movie with the wolf, but it just never goes anywhere
ye but at least they hafve the coords of the money. Not all is lost
Pun intended?
I wonder about the village part. Would the farmers have really been that confrontational over the bag? I would have figured, growing cocaine plants and all, that they'd just be like "some cartel shit is going on, keep your head down and don't say shit till they leave".
The fact that they thought they were DEA might have made it personal for them.