I haven’t yet seen Joe Carnahan, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon‘s The Rip (Netflix, 1.16), but some snarky comment-threader wrote this morning that it’s okay but no great shakes…a morally conflicted, slightly-better-than-generic programmer.
I’m tapping this out from memory as I can’t find the URL, but the guy basically said that The Rip is “intriguing at first but soon devolves into a generic Netflix thriller, somewhat in the vein of the last Artists Equity boilerplate crime flick, The Instigators.”
The latter was, in HE’s view, a first-rate 2024 Apple feature that was produced by Damon and Affleck’s Artists Equity.
The comment-threader was wrong in at least one respect because The Instigators, a downbeat Boston noir comedy, is no boilerplate ho-hummer! On 8.18.24 I called it “a true American original —- The Friends of Eddie Coyle meets deadpan screwball fatalism.”
The only thing that doesn’t work about The Instigators, I said, is the humdrum title. If it was my show I’d have called it I’ve Been Waiting All My Life To Fuck Up Like This — yes, a line stolen from Karel Reisz and Robert Stone‘s Who’ll Stop The Rain? (’78).
Essence of my review: “Despite the downish tone of this heist-gone-wrong ensemble chase thriller, it’s fundamentally a low-key noir comedy…sardonic sarcasm meets “fuck our lousy luck and Jesus, have we fucked things up or what?” meets a kind of loser Keystone Cops mentality.
“It’s basically about the oafish shenanigans of a squad of half-assed, not-smart-enough but not altogether disreputable guys, principally played by Damon (who produced through Artists Equity) and Casey Affleck (who co-wrote the script with Chuck Maclean). Their performances are sweet, sublime, spot-on.
“I was truly delighted by this existential crime sitcom, which is darkly hilarious without ever quite announcing that’s a hah-hah ‘comedy’. It’s certainly too smart and cool for the idiots out there who hate the idea of mixing humor and loser-stamped noir. It almost delivers the same kind of tonal balancing act that Pulp Fiction was about.
“And the supporting cast is aces — Hong Chau, Paul Walter Hauser, Michael Stuhlbarg, Ving Rhames, Alfred Molina, Toby Jones, Jack Harlow, etc.”