Film Preview: Triple 9 (2016)

Page Revisions:

(January 24, 2016) Original
(February 21, 2016) New Trailer (#3) / New Posters (#11-#28) / Updated Release Date (changed from 2/19/16)

Release Date:

February 26, 2016

Synopsis:

From IMDb: “A gang of criminals and corrupt cops plan the murder of a police officer in order to pull off their biggest heist yet across town.”

Poster Rating: C+ / C (9) / C- (7) / B- (9) / C+ / B

SEE ALL POSTERS BELOW
Review: (#1) With the tagline, the design is interesting, especially as it pulls a scene directly from the film. Without that knowledge, though it seems a touch cheesy. (#2-#10) These character posters may have differing top halves, but the bottoms are identical. That may seem unifying, but it is actually quite lazy. That they all use the black-white-and-red motif that has plagued poster design in recent years is further insult.

(#11-#17) This unimpressive batch of character posters wants the audience to think the characters say these terse, corny catch phrases, which deludes the film’s gritty, realistic nature. (#18-#26) I want to say that these are Spanish-language posters, but I can’t really tell. That said, trust a foreign market to generate the better designs for an American film. While the white background is a bit overbearing, the colors play out fairly well in spite of their similarity to a years-long trend in action thriller poster design.

(#27) There are a lot of individual images and faces that make up this design, which gives it a bit of strength and depth, but the layout is so strict and uncompromising that it distracts from the whole. (#28) Borrowing form an earlier design, sticking to the black-white-red motif and then combining elements from the most recent set of character posters creates a very interesting effect. What’s most compelling is that the actor names that are displayed in read running vertically for each character are employed in such a specific way as to suggest each is shedding tears. It’s a stirring design element, but one that might not be intentional, which would be disappointing.

Trailer Rating: B- / B+ / C+

SEE ALL TRAILERS BELOW
Review: (#1) In the green band trailer, we’re presented with a film that feels more like a buddy cop drama with a seedy underbelly bubbling underneath. It also looks like two wholly different films.

(#2) The red band trailer is entirely different, which is a welcome change of pace in the industry. This present a more gritty, thrilling narrative that pits questionably good people against relentlessly bad people. An interesting dichotomy to be sure and a film that looks a lot more compelling than it probably is.

(#3) XXXXX