Film review: TRIPLE 9, from ‘Built For Speed’

On paper Triple 9 looked a winner. A rugged story of police corruption and organised crime helmed by a premier exponent of visceral action films, The Proposition and Lawless director John Hillcoat. The film also boasts a stellar cast including Kate Winslet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Casey Affleck and Woody Harrelson. Despite its seemingly impeccable credentials, though, Triple 9 fails to fire.

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Film review: BLACK MASS, from ‘Built For Speed’

Black Mass dramatises the rein of crime boss James ‘Whitey’ bulger who ruled South Boston from the mid-70’s until the 1990’s. His story is told largely through flashbacks as Bulger’s (Johnny Depp) former associates spill the beans on his disturbing life of crime. The film reveals Bulger’s involvement in multiple murders including brutal vengeance on those he suspected of betraying

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Film review: CUT SNAKE, from ‘Built For Speed’

Many films have explored the idea of a person’s dark past coming back to haunt them like some monster from the Id; Sexy Beast and Cape Fear being two thrilling examples.  New Australian crime drama Cut Snake, which is set in 1970’s Brisbane, revisits this theme with impressively tense and disturbing results. Alex Russell plays young factory worker Merv or

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Film review: THE RAID 2: BERANDAL, from Built For Speed

I haven’t seen Gareth Evans’ (the Welsh film director not the former Labor politician) first Raid film -a martial arts epic set in a Jakarta apartment building over-run by ferocious criminals – but as far as I’m aware it is not essential to have seen that film to follow the plot of the sequel The Raid 2: Berandal.  The Raid

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Film review: EVERYBODY HAS A PLAN, from Built For Speed

For the first fifteen minutes of the slow-moving Argentinian crime drama, Everybody Has a Plan, audiences will be wondering what the hell is going on. The film jumps back and forth between various scenarios, each of which features Viggo Mortensen as an apparently different character. In one he’s a clean-cut doctor, in another a dishevelled and disillusioned husband to wife

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Film review: BROKEN CITY, from Built For Speed

Like the Al Pacino film City Hall, Broken City immerses us in the grubby world of New York politics. Unfortunately, this film also immerses us in a world of clichés, clunky dialogue, dull heroes and ridiculous villains. Mark Wahlberg plays disgraced New York cop Billy Taggart who, years after a questionable shooting, is now a struggling, debt-laden private eye. When

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