Kate Winslet Boards John Hillcoat’s Triple Nine

UPDATE: We’re hearing that Gal Gadot, Michael B. Jordan, Teresa Palmer, Michael Pena and Aaron Paul are all in talks for the film as well. 

I want to be excited about Triple Nine. Really, I do. John Hillcoat’s upcoming cop thriller sounds tremendously promising and the Matt Cook-penned script is most certainly intriguing. The only problem is, Hillcoat’s last star-studded effort was Lawless. Ya, remember that film? Probably not. It starred Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Shia LaBeouf and Jessica Chastain and somehow, even despite the strong performances, Hillcoat still managed to deliver a dud of a film.

With Triple Nine, Hillcoat already has Chiwetel Ejiofor and Casey Affleck on board, ensuring that he’s off to a good start in terms of casting. Now, he’s brought Kate Winslet on to play the female lead. Once again, the director has put together an exciting cast, one with a ton of potential. As a big fan of Hillcoat’s breakout film The Proposition, I can only hope that he fares better here than in his last big-screen outing.

For those unfamiliar with Cook’s script, it will follow “a group of crooked L.A. police officers who realize they must shoot one of their own in order to get away with planning a major heist. They choose as their victim a rookie and honorable young officer, but what they don’t know is that another cop has infiltrated the gang, and is working on a setup.”

Based on that gritty synopsis alone, Triple Nine definitely has my interest, but, to be fair, so did Lawless when it was first announced. In fact, Lawless was one of my most anticipated films of 2012, one I was looking forward to right up until the point when I finally saw it.

Admittedly, Hillcoat showed tremendous potential as a filmmaker with the aforementioned Proposition and the apocalyptic, Viggo Moretensen-starring The Road, so I am certain that he has more great films ahead of him. All I can do is hope that Triple Nine is one of them; or, at least, that it won’t be as forgettable, dramatically inert and disappointing as Lawless was.