Stars can feel the Heat in Triple 9

The director John Hillcoat and the cast of Triple 9 talk about the debt their film owes to the Michael Mann thriller Heat and other classic cops-and-robbers films.

Kate Winslet and director John Hillcoat on the set of Triple 9. Courtesy Gulf Film

In most cities in the United States, a 999 police emergency code means one thing: officer down – the alert that nobody wants to hear. "It's an unspoken understanding [among officers]," says Australian film director John Hillcoat (The Road). "If they hear that call, they'll walk away from whatever is going on to go there."

He saw it happen once.

“There was a shooting in the Hills in LA, and the shooter had already been taken out,” he says. “I have never seen so many police and helicopters.”

All this provides the perfect set-up for Hillcoat's new cops-and-robbers drama Triple 9. When a gang of masked raiders decide to rob a Homeland Security depot in downtown Atlanta, they realise the only way they will have a chance of getting in is to cause a citywide 999 distraction by shooting a police officer.

The twist is that crooks are cops themselves – and ex-military.

“I just loved the moral dilemma of these corrupt cops having to kill one of their own to create a diversion,” says Hillcoat. “Under pressure, people do extreme things.”

While it's true that Triple 9 treads some well-worn terrain, it sets its sights high. Classics such as William Friedkin's The French Connection and Michael Mann's Heat were the touchstones.

"We referenced Heat a lot," says Anthony Mackie who plays Marcus Belmont, one of the corrupt cops. "Heat was the first time you saw criminals using tactical gun work. When I think about our movie, that's what I think about – how tactical the guys are, how complex and well-crafted everything is."

The opening scene of Triple 9 shows this off, as five masked men burst into an Atlanta bank and systematically raid the safety- deposit boxes.

“You just felt like you were going in, doing the thing, getting out, and getting gone,” says British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, who plays gang leader Michael Atwood. “It gave it a real, proper intensity.”

This is just the beginning of the story, which set in a moral grey area that gets increasingly muddied when the gang, under pressure from the Russian-Jewish mafia, is forced into carrying out the Homeland Security job.

To generate that 999 distress call, the gang sets up Belmont's unwitting partner, morally upstanding rookie Chris Allen (Casey Affleck) to be gunned down in a dangerous part of town.

Affleck spent time with the Atlanta police department in preparation for the role, and began to understand what it’s like to be a cop.

“If you’re sitting in a police car, marked or unmarked, the looks that you get go from wary to suspicious to resentful,” he says. “And it’s a stressful job – you’re driving around town, having a casual conversation, nothing much is going on, and then suddenly you’re going 70 miles per hour down a side-street. You feel like something dangerous could happen.”

Mackie did his own style of “special” research for his role.

“He is very familiar with these worlds,” says Hillcoat. What could that mean?

“I have a bunch of friends who are cops. I have a bunch of friends who are dirty cops,” says the actor with a laugh. “I feel like I know what a cop is. From my experiences with cops and from the cops that I know, I have a pretty good idea what that is. I went into the project very clear about what I wanted to portray and how I wanted to come across.”

With a cast that also includes Woody Harrelson, Breaking Bad's Aaron Paul, The Walking Dead's Norman Reedus and Gal Gadot (who will also be seen this month as Wonder Woman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice), Triple 9's crown jewel might be Kate Winslet. The Oscar-winning British actress plays Irina, the ruthless head of Kosher mafia.

“I can’t express how excited she was to play a villain,” says Hillcoat. “She’s never had that chance. So she absolutely relished that opportunity … to explore another side that she’s never really been able to as an actress.”

Ejiofor, who spent the most time with her on set, adds: "In a litany of brilliant Kate Winslet performances, it's another one to add to them." Arriving as it does at a time when America is rife with protests against police brutality and the treatment of minorities, Triple 9 certainly feels like its tapping the zeitgeist.

“There’s a lot going on right now,” says Affleck. “It’s either very good timing or bad timing for the movie.”

With cops taking SWAT training – which Hillcoat describes as “like a marriage” between the military and law-enforcement – there is no shortage of tension on the streets.

“Obviously with those stakes rising, there’s going to be excessive force at times – and that’s a real problem,” he says.

Whatever its intentions, some will be concerned that Triple 9 is too violent and bloody.

“I think John likes violence in movies,” says Affleck. “He likes having the prosthetic heads and fake blood on the hood of a car – there’s a little bit of a horror-movie director in him somewhere.”

But like his earlier films, The Proposition and Lawless, Hillcoat says that the brutality is never gratuitous.

“When it comes to violence, there are always consequences to both sides,” he says. “No one walks out unscathed.”

• Triple 9 is in cinemas now