Right here’s a very good rule of thumb for making a film: Don’t enable the press tour to be probably the most thrilling part. The Rip, from the director Joe Carnahan, is a cop drama the place macho guys (and gals) tote carbine rifles and grunt law-enforcement lingo—the type of crime-genre pablum that generally will get thrown onto Netflix in mid-January. However this one comes with a ridiculously stacked solid, together with, most essential, its two leads: Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. The longtime Hollywood buddies have dutifully hit the promotional circuit to speak up their newest collaboration, in addition to argue over who’s the larger New England Patriots fan, reminisce on their former shared checking account, and usually remind everybody concerning the healthful endurance of their artistic bond.
However none of that cheerfulness or straightforward pal chemistry will be discovered within the movie they’re plugging. Damon and Affleck have acted collectively on-screen quite a few occasions, however that is their first time sharing the highest billing since Dogma, their 1999 darkish comedy a couple of pair of fallen angels. The hiatus makes The Rip the type of nostalgia-inducing star automobile that ought to pique viewers’ curiosity—which is why its seeming disinterest within the leads’ private connection is so weird. Affleck performs the Miami Police Division detective J. D. Byrne, and Damon is his superior, Lieutenant Dane Dumars. Byrne and Dumars get drawn right into a conspiracy surrounding a colossal stash of illicit cash, which is coveted by cartel leaders and crooked cops alike. Carnahan, nevertheless, appears extra all for depicting reasonable police process than in letting the well-known pals have a lot enjoyable collectively.
That The Rip is such a bland venue for its charismatic stars’ reunion is a horrible disgrace. They do look the half, sporting large beards and close-cropped hair; their brows are eternally furrowed and their eyes are continually narrowed as their characters attempt to sniff out one another’s loyalty and the loyalty of different teammates drawn in by “the rip” (the $20 million they’ve simply found). If this movie had been made within the ’80s or ’90s, it will be crackling with zippy one-liners—which writers together with Shane Black (Deadly Weapon) had been paid prime greenback to sprinkle into each script. As an alternative, Carnahan, who’s made different weighty masculine dramas resembling Narc, The Gray, and Copshop, is generally dedicated to exploring how a big sum of cash begins breeding suspicion amongst colleagues.
As Dumars and Byrne, Damon and Affleck are decreased to growling law-enforcement converse, barking into walkie-talkies and finishing up each dialog whereas not less than one hand rests on an automated weapon—simply in case somebody bursts via the wall. The supporting solid, together with Teyana Taylor, Steven Yeun, Kyle Chandler, and Catalina Sandino Moreno, all get their very own assault rifle and dictionary of cop lingo. Nevertheless it appears they’re extra probably on board not due to the fabric however due to the attract of working with Damon and Affleck. (Maybe additionally interesting is the truth that the duo’s manufacturing firm, Artists Fairness, labored out a profit-sharing mannequin with Netflix.) The Rip has little else to supply the actors or the viewers past a plot constructed on ratcheting up stress and double-crossing characters.
I’m unsure why this is the film Damon and Affleck determined to reunite as co-leads for. Within the lead-up to The Rip’s launch, the pair gave context for the lengthy hiatus they took as inventive collaborators. They didn’t need to be seen as a double act, they defined; the media had rapidly regarded Damon and Affleck as such after they co-starred in and received the Oscar for Greatest Unique Screenplay for Good Will Looking. The movie, which they wrote collectively of their early 20s, once they had been toiling away on small initiatives, launched them to megastardom.
Their careers as A-listers have differed fairly dramatically, nevertheless. Damon grew to become a mannequin of consistency: He headed up sturdy franchises with the Jason Bourne and Ocean’s motion pictures whereas additionally churning out work with critical auteurs resembling Martin Scorsese, the Coen brothers, and Christopher Nolan. Affleck’s expertise with fame was a curler coaster; he appeared out and in of the tabloids and had a number of declines and comebacks. He’s performed two completely different comic-book superheroes, married two completely different superstars, and develop into a celebrated director in his personal proper, even profitable Greatest Image on the Oscars for Argo. But he’s struggled to take care of an analogous inventive high quality to Damon, bouncing between excessive highs (resembling Gone Woman) and low lows (maybe most infamously the box-office bomb Gigli).
Damon and Affleck’s correct post-Dogma on-screen reunion got here with Ridley Scott’s The Final Duel in 2021, which the pair co-wrote. The film was a monetary disappointment, nevertheless it was effectively reviewed. They adopted that up with Air in 2023, a lighter true-story dramedy about Nike’s courtship of Michael Jordan within the Eighties. In each movies, Damon took the lead position and Affleck performed a princely supporting character who would swoop in for some comedian reduction—a wonderful stability they first established in Good Will Looking, and one which recalled what drew audiences to all of them these years in the past. However neither reunion was the full head-to-head that some followers might need longed for.
Watch the promotional movies for The Rip and it’s clear why folks could clamor for Damon and Affleck to revive their dynamic. They’re not play-acting their friendship for the cameras; they’ve a deep, shared historical past, and are canny about how Hollywood has modified within the a long time since they tried breaking into the business collectively. (For the report, they’ve been buddies since Damon, age 10, met Affleck, age 8, at college.) Their real-world mixture of camaraderie and quiet rivalry, nevertheless, is a vein they’ve by some means not often tapped on-screen. Off-screen, Affleck has a barely rougher star persona, whereas Damon’s is usually a little extra withdrawn and mental. Their characters in The Rip, in the meantime, left me pissed off by their similarity: They’re primarily simply taking part in two sides of the identical coin.
Then once more, perhaps Damon and Affleck are sensible to supply a film like The Rip. Grumbly motion dramas appear to play effectively on streaming providers this time of yr, when awards season is dying down and viewers flip to one thing a bit of trashier. The film is hardly a disaster; it’s only a by-the-book, considerably forgettable little notch within the crime style. I’m glad Damon and Affleck are comfy carrying a movie collectively now, after working exhausting to determine themselves as people. However I’d like to see the actors’ chummy New England competitiveness translate past the press-tour TikToks and return to the display—utilizing the variations that make their partnership intriguing to their profit.
