Sun Honglei, soon to be seen in Zhang Yimou's Blood Simple re-visioning Amazing Tales: Three Guns
The lazy comparison I've seen made to Triangle is Grindhouse, which is only similar to this movie in that it features famous directors teaming up. In just that respect, they're quite different, since instead of separate features, Hong Kong kings Tsui Hark, Ringo Lam, and Johnnie To directed a single act (in the order listed) of a single "heist gone wrong" picture.
Simon Yam as realtor Sam
The three leads are an interesting mix as well. They play three very different guys who just happen to be drinking buddies. The actors playing them are similarly three different flavors of Chinese cinema actor. The most recognizable of them is Simon Yam, who's been acting for decades. He plays Sam, a realtor whose wife is running around on him. You probably know his face if you've seen some Hong Kong stuff but aren't an enthusiast. The most humorous footnote on his filmography for me was Gay Man on Bus in Drunken Master 3. Louis Koo is just on the other end of the experience scale from Yam, recently co-starring in a couple things. He's comes off in the Making-of featurette as kind of like a Cantonese Disney Channel kid who's really concerned with his hair looking perfect and how famous the people he works with are.
Pretty boy Louis Koo
My favorite actor of the bunch, Sun Honglei, plays Mok, an antiques dealer. Sun is the contemplative, immersive actor among them. He's only been doing movies for the last ten years or so, starting out in the one-two punch of Zhang Yimou's The Road Home and Happy Times. He went on immediately afterward to costar with Gong Li in Zhou Yu's Train. A couple years and a few projects later he worked with Tsui Hark in Seven Swords, and then did Mongol in 2007 around the same time Triangle was made. He's starring in the recently-wrapped Blood Simple re-do Three Guns for Zhang. I generally keep an eye on his IMDb profile to see what he's up to next. Gordon Lam (Lam Ka Tung) is really rather good as the cop with whom Sam's wife is cheating. Likewise solid are Kelly Lin as Sam's ultra-imbalanced wife and Suet Lam as a whacked-out drug dealer.
As for the movie, it's solid stuff thanks to the three acts feeling about as cohesive as they would in a film directed by only one of these guys. It gets a bit muddled toward the middle, but the third act saves it. I intentionally avoided poking around to see who directed which part so that I wasn't watching it thinking "ah, how very To" or "Ringo you aesthetic mad genius, how I love you," but I still kinda picked up on who did what in the opening minutes of sections 1 and 2. I don't expect that to be the same for people who aren't into the work these guys do. For those who do, I should note that there's a nice nod in Ringo's act back to Tarantino, who was inspired by City on Fire when writing Reservoir Dogs.
I enjoy the approaches of the three directors and I relish a good heist movie, so I was quite happy and at home here. Plot threads go unresolved or dropped in places, but save one instance of attempted vehicular homicide approaching Amnesia Bullets levels of implausibility, Triangle never remotely approaches laughable territory.
Triangle only just last week came out on DVD from the folks at Magnet, who I find myself increasingly thankful to for releasing titles I'd have to otherwise import for exorbitant prices. Triangle played Cannes in 2007, so it's had a long journey to Region 1 availability not unlike many foreign films that aren't nominated for Oscars.
The only extras are a Making of Triangle featurette [6:15] and a Behind the Scenes [13:31] chunk of footage from various points in production, the highlight of which is Johnnie To repeating Sun Honglei's name in a way that made me wonder if he'd been drinking on the set. The Making-of pulls footage from Cannes and some on-set stuff with the actors. This is worth taking a look at if it wasn't on your radar already.