By any measure J.C. Chandor (All Is Lost, A Most Violent Year, Margin Call) is a major-league director. By any reasonable standard Triple Frontier (Netflix, 3.6), which Chandor directed and co-wrote with Mark Boal (Zero Dark Thirty, The Hurt Locker), looks like an above-average commando thriller. The four stars (Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam, Garrett Hedlund) are grade-A-ish or in that general realm. So it’s not just some run-of-the-mill Netflix programmer. It has a serious vibe.
For a couple of weeks I’ve been saying that I want to catch a theatrical press screening, as an action film of this apparent calibre needs size and aural power to fully work, and because Roman Vasyanov‘s lensing looks handsome as hell. And with the limited theatrical debut only six days away (the Netflix streaming begins on 3.13) it’s been hard as hell to find an L.A. press screening. And it’s not on the Netflix online press site.
A Manhattan theatrical premiere is scheduled for this Sunday, 3.3…finally! It will press-screen concurrently in Los Angeles — thanks!
In 2010 Tom Hanks signed to do an earlier version of Triple Frontier under director Kathryn Bigelow. Johnny Depp was also attached or at least interested. There was talk at the time of changing the title to Sleeping Dogs. In late ’12 it was reported that Bigelow and Boal had put the project aside. Hanks would have played Affleck’s role. Affleck looks fat, of course — his breasts are bigger than Lady Gaga‘s and he could play Harvey Weinstein if he were to add 25 or 30 pounds — but he’s still Affleck.
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