The Rip Review: Ben Affleck and Matt Damon own this Joe Carnahan action flick
PLOT: Several weeks after their captain is murdered, five members (Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Teyana Taylor, Steven Yeun, and Catalina Sandino Moreno) of Miami’s Tactical Narcotics Unit are tipped off about what they believe will be a poorly guarded stash house. Once they arrive, they realize more than $20 million in drug money has been stashed there—and that someone on their own team may have plans to rip it off.
REVIEW: One of the most memorable movie theater experiences I ever had was, as a nineteen-year-old, seeing Joe Carnahan’s NARC at a matinee screening. I vividly remember walking in alone, in downtown Montreal circa 2002, on a three-hour break between classes at university. The opening sequence knocked me on my ass, and I returned to see it a few more times with friends, having sold them all on how good it was. Since then, Carnahan has become much in demand as a Hollywood director, but unlike many of his peers, he marches to his own drum, opting to focus more on the independent world (or work with mini-majors) rather than studios.
As such, The Rip is his biggest movie since The A-Team, with it financed by Netflix and starring two of the biggest movie stars of our generation, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Yet rather than tone down his style, Carnahan has made a movie that’s distinctly part of his canon and feels very much like a companion piece to NARC.
Incredibly inspired by a true story, like NARC, The Rip mixes propulsive action with a strong sense of humanity, including the toll an often violent role in a squad such as the one featured here would take on its members. Matt Damon has a strong part as the team’s new leader, who is suffering from major disillusionment with his job—partly because of politics, but largely because his young son has just died of cancer, and, to make matters worse, he now has crippling medical debt to contend with. We’re used to seeing Damon as a man of action, and often an upbeat one, so seeing him as a cop worn down by the elements stacked against him makes a strong impression.
Ben Affleck is just as good as his second-in-command, who, like Damon’s character, is suffering from a major personal loss, but seems more committed to the idea of being a cop and pushing that boulder uphill than Damon’s, who appears to be wavering. What’s great about their casting is that while we’re used to seeing them as a pair, they usually play buddies. Here, they are—at times—antagonistic toward each other, which keeps the audience on edge and makes the film hard to predict as it goes along.
Indeed, this is one of the few action movies where I was never really sure who the heroes and villains would turn out to be, and I also felt like anyone could be killed at any time, as Carnahan has never shied away from killing off his stars (in our interview, Joe reminded me that he killed off Affleck fifteen minutes into Smokin’ Aces). While Matt and Ben anchor the movie, the supporting cast is strong, with Scott Adkins playing against type in a non-fighting role as Affleck’s FBI agent brother, while Kyle Chandler is seedier than you’d expect as a testosterone-fueled DEA agent. There’s also Teyana Taylor in her first post–One Battle After Another role and Catalina Sandino Moreno as Matt and Ben’s fellow cops, while Steven Yeun has an excellent part as the odd man out on the team, trying to navigate his way through an increasingly violent evening. Sasha Calle also delivers a very strong post-The Flash performance as the operator of the stash house, who may or may not be trying to manipulate our heroes.
While largely a thriller, The Rip also features some killer action, including a huge car chase and gunfight for Affleck, while Damon gets a terrific hand-to-hand fight at one point, proving he’s still got those Bourne moves down pat (he’s also in terrific shape, looking like he was prepping for The Odyssey when they shot this). All in all, it adds up to an absolutely killer action flick that I had a blast with. It’s a shame Netflix hasn’t given this one a theatrical release, as it would kill on a big screen, but even so, it should be a huge hit for the streamer, featuring Matt and Ben at their best.
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