STACK Mar #137

18 / 99

visit CINEMA INTERVIEW
18 MARCH 2016
CINEMA
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.”
A 999 call triggers a mass response from
the police department, who converge on
the location of the downed officer.
“I’ve heard of up to 300 police officers
showing up after a cop shooting in Atlanta,”
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.