Is Triple Frontier a deconstruction of The Expendables genre?
Thinking back, while watching The Expendables there’s a certain feeling that is inherently missing. The gravity of consequence. Every gunshot, every fallen body, every blown up vehicle would not add up much in terms of the overall weight of the movie or its characters. It ends up being a facade, an enjoyable abstraction of what a war would be like. The carnage in The Expendables as a depiction of the brutality of bullets is like setting off fireworks to depict military bombardment.
But that is intentional. We don’t watch The Expendables to get lessons about life and war. We watch it to escape reality. To vicariously experience the testosterone-fuelled supermen mowing down enemies from the right side of morality in order to reach the inevitable victory of good over evil. The good guys win. They walk off into the sunset. Fin.
This is where Triple Frontier subverts the genre. The first act is reminiscent of all other movies within this genre where a group of the ex-warriors band together to accomplish an impossible, and usually touted to be the last, mission. One that can only be done by the best of the best. But it bends the rules in key places resulting in a deconstruction of the genre it disguises to be.
Changing the motive
Instead of being driven by the need for justice and altruistic purposes, Triple Frontier makes it clear on what the end game is, A heist. Driven by money and not for the sake of rescuing people from the clutches of an evil drug lord. Even though the protagonists paint the crosshairs on the drug lord, the enemy is just the means to an end. Defeating evil becomes a by-product of the mission.
This shift from the norm establishes the motives of the band of brothers to be driven more by their personal needs and wants rather than being the result of a sword-waving speech about freedom or glory.
Changing the morality
As the movie progresses, you realize that the protagonists aren’t heroes. Just because the story is from their point of view our loyalties tend to lean towards watching them succeed. But as the weight of the money, literal and metaphorical, looms over the group, the darker shades of their morality come spilling out.
When the gang discovers the money within the house, dollar signs light up their eyes as if it were an unintentional callback to 1964's Children of the Damned. Their necessity for self-preservation takes a backseat to dreams of Condos and Ferraris, as they dangerously inch towards running out of luck.
Even in situations where innocent lives are laid to rest in the face of losing the loot, the violence becomes easily justifiable. These justifications range from the result of being chewed up and spit out by the government to the martyrdom of a fellow soldier. At each point, the reasons seem to be just the veils to guard their own greed. Which ultimately breaks down when the realisation hits them.
Character realizations
Action movies tend to have characters impervious to the body count. Each neutralised enemy doesn’t lead to a change of heart or the questioning of self. Such self-realisation would result in the protagonist being submissive, which can be read as a weakness. REAL soldiers stand their ground till their last breath. Even John Wick wipes out an entire army of people to avenge his dog.
But as Triple Frontier progresses, we see each character grappling with the futility of their rewards for the price they pay. When Ben(Garrett Hedlund) starts burning the money, there’s a certain madness in the eyes of each member as they arrive at a certain understanding. The sacrifice of their own values for the sake of green paper bills.
Once the team loses one of their own, their itchy trigger fingers get muted with the newfound awareness of the cost of taking a life. Even though all the characters aren’t equally fleshed out, there is a clear arc which extends over the collective. And hence even though the movie is about the journey they take to escape the clutches of their enemies, it runs in parallel with the internal struggle for their values in the face of greed.
These points do make Triple Frontier seem far more nuanced than it might be. But that’s one reading of it. Simply put, its a cocktail with an ounce of The Expendables, a splash of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre topped with a slice of Three Kings.
There were some issues with some hollow characterisations, the drop of momentum in the second act and a seemingly flat ending. It still is an entertaining watch with great cinematography and a rock soundtrack that manages to maintain a parallel with the narrative. But its ability to turn some of the macho action tropes on their head is what results in a deconstruction of the genre that The Expendables exemplifies.
