Even soldiers need a side hustle. That’s the thesis this week, as Be Reel unpacks three military heist movies: “Triple Frontier” (2019), “Three Kings” (1999) and “Kelly’s Heroes” (1970). These surprisingly similar films all focus on a platoon simply not getting what it wants or needs from the armed forces. Which is to say, they’re all looking to cash in on their training and time.
Where these movies differ, however, is what the money means to the would-be-patriotic thieves and where it fits into the story. In Netflix’s new “Triple Frontier,” writer-director J.C. Chandor is more interested in what happens after the mountains of money are recovered. David O. Russell’s “Three Kings” also shoulders this “too much of a good thing” problem, but that film eagerly pivots to a more human drama once the money is acquired, devolving into the question of “if thieves do a good thing on the way, are they thieves at all?” Of course, Clint Eastwood and his “heroes” don’t consider any many quandaries in “Kelly’s Heroes“—fighting the Nazis is fairly black and white for them, even if the spoils are 14,000 bars of seemingly origin-less gold.
Zooming out, these movies are predominantly a venue for white men to act out their fantasies, forgivably enough, through the conceit of the armed forces. But one can’t help but miss the larger perspective of these lunks going behind enemy lines just to ensure they don’t have to work day jobs later in life. It’s masculinity run amock that leads to the paradox of the Sierra Madre, and the notion of taking only what they can carry somehow begins to look like a chump’s game to these Hollywood soldiers. That cautionary theme meshing (sometimes awkwardly) with a thirst for adventure places these movies squarely in the annals of American cinema and allows them to be made again and again.