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Queensland-born filmmaker John Hillcoat may not be prolific but his handful of genre features
to date have totally immersed us in bleak, authentically realised worlds. Applying his trademark
grit to the urban heist thriller
TRIPLE 9
involved lots of research, he tells Scott Hocking.
ang on, has it really been four
years since
Lawless
? Oh my
God, are you sure?” asks an
exasperated John Hillcoat when I bring up
the fact that he seems to make a movie
every four years. “I think you’re right. Wow.
Okay, now I’ve really got to do something
about this.”
Triple 9
is indeed the incredibly selective
director’s first film since bootlegger drama
Lawless
in 2012; a hard-edged urban crime
thriller in which the titular police code for
“officer down” is used as a diversion by a
crew of corrupt cops and ex-Special Forces
soldiers in order to pull off an impossible
heist for the Russian-Israeli mob.
“I love genre films and finding a way of
reinventing them,” Hillcoat explains. “I’d
been itching to do something contemporary,
urban, energetic, and like a commentary
of where America is at right now.
Triple 9
helped tick all those boxes – the idea of the
999 code and the rich moral complexity that
it threw up was the key.”