Review: Triple Threat (2019)

Director: Jesse V. Johnson | 96 minutes | action, thriller | Actors: Tony Jaa, Tiger Hu Chen, Iko Uwais, Scott Adkins, Celina Jade, Michael Jai White, Michael Jai White, Michael Bisping, JeeJa Yanin, Dominiquie Vandenberg, Ron Smoorenburg, Monica Siu-Kei Mug, Guangbei Zhang, Sile Zhang, Anthony Tai

The question remains how he got it done, but for his sixteenth film, Jesse V. Johnson got a star cast together. In this case, don’t expect a contribution from Brad Pitt, George Clooney or other Hollywood icons. What you can look forward to is a production full of martial arts stars. Scott Adkins, Iko Uwais, Tony Jaa, Ron Smoorenburg and Michael Jai White are not little boys in the genre, to say the least. In “Triple Threat” these fighters come together and let their fists speak.

In “Thriple Threat” a daughter of a billionaire is threatened. A gang of mercenaries wants to kidnap the woman to fill their bank account. To protect the lady, her family enlists the help of three patrons. This trio must keep the villains away. That does not happen with the voice of reason, but by breaking bone and martial arts practices.

So far so good. Johnson has managed to assemble a nice company. Unfortunately, he did not manage to watch a great genre film. “Triple Threat” is downright moderate and does not use the talent of the cast. If you cast a star like Iko “The Raid” Uwais, you have to give it something to do. The same goes for Tony “Ong Bak” Jaa and Scott “Ninja” Adkins. These guys are incredibly disciplined martial arts stars who have achieved great success in earlier films. Johnson doesn’t know what to do with his cast and lets them shoot a lot. Such a shame if you have to deal with such outstanding physical action.

The battle scenes are reasonably shown. Not spectacular, but decent. What remains is a film with a few nice action scenes (far too few), a weak story and poor English-speaking Asian stars. The potential is there, but is not being exploited. Deadly sin!