Triple 9

With corruption commonplace, there are but a few actual “noir” locations these days: Los Angeles secures its position as eternal noir with crime in broad daylight. There’s Washington, DC, where innocence is soiled in backroom deals. And the new kid on the chopping block is Atlanta, formerly called Terminus, where improper drainage develops into sinkholes from which there is no escape, and things perpetually happen for no good reason. Not since Sharkey’s Machine has any film captured any better the moral ambiguity and compromised indecision of “the City Too Busy To Hate”! From its tracking shots of the downtown connector, clogged and un-maneuverable to brutal lightning strikes and unfinished confederate wall carvings, Atlanta is fucked! The southern belle has been replaced by the femme fatale, here depicted as Irina (Kate Winslet) as the Russian mob boss-lady of Atlanta, who blackmails local cops into obtaining intel that will release her husband from a Russian prison. Norman Reedus (The Walking Dead) brings his psychotic brother into the fold of cops taking orders from Irina, who has Chiwetel Ejiofol’s wife held hostage, as Clifton Collins tags along. Woody Harrelson is a police sergeant whose relative Chris (Casey Affleck) has been bumped from his Buckhead beat to patrol abandoned housing projects filled with transgendered CIs and Mexican gangs. A grime-shrouded southern noir with severed heads and detached feet. Atlanta, its expanse offering the backdrop of widespread corruption, is the real star here.