At the end of the day, stories need to be about characters, not types. While nothing that ought to inspire a letter writing campaign from the ADL,"Triple 9" fails to make it past shorthand.

The real screen stealer in Triple 9 is Clifton Collins Jr., as the quietly diabolical, dirty detective Rodriguez. He is a reason why this film will keep you glued to your seat.

It's the kind of crooked cop film that will likely wind up on a random list of 100 Crooked Cop Movies compiled in no ranking order... in the next few years. It's that derivative.

'Triple 9' honors the esteemed tradition of American crime films, tipping its hat hither and thither to the greats that preceded it, creating a circus of variably intriguing characters to smash into one another along the way.