From the direction to the script to the production elements to the performances, Triple Frontier is a first-class ride.

There may be no honor among thieves, but Triple Frontier certainly makes watching them pretty entertaining.

When greed runs up against conscience, you’ve got a story. It does in Triple Frontier, and the story of that collision is a violent and thought-provoking one.

Triple Frontier lands a handful of thrilling sequences in a sea of familiar riffs on greed, masculinity, and the lingering traumas of war.

Though it’s been many years in development, it remains a timely look at the dangers of our increasingly outsourced, privatized military-intelligence network.

Chandor handles the action scenes smoothly, making it easy to gloss over what the movie is saying, trying to say or accidentally saying. He maintains the kind of accelerated pace that gives your eyes a workout, and pads the story with an inviting camaraderie that brings you into the group.

It’s an enjoyable enough way to spend two hours but without any commentary or real depth, it’s in need of a bit more suspense or conflict to really oil the wheels, the film too often ambling along when it should be racing.

Triple Frontier is engaging in parts with well-mounted action. But the characters lack definition and you can’t help but think an old timer like Howard Hawks or Sam Fuller might have done it better in half the time.

Despite the heavy dose of action and numerous tense situations, this Netflix offering has trouble staying in high gear once it gets there and the characterizations remain one dimensional — the men all speak exactly the same way.

There’s a dullness at the core of Triple Frontier.