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‘The Rip’ review: Damon and Affleck elevate Netflix action-thriller
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck add prestige and chemistry to this Netflix action movie, playing Miami cops and longtime friends who suddenly lose trust in each other at a pivotal moment.
About midway through Joe Carnahan’s twist-filled “The Rip,” Miami PD Detective Sergeant J.D. Byrne (Ben Affleck) confronts his superior (and longtime friend), Lieutenant Dane Dumars (Matt Damon).
“I don’t trust you right now,” Byrne says. “And that’s a problem.”
It’s a line that’s been uttered in a million crime dramas before. But coming from Affleck — who excels at playing a hothead with a conscience — and delivered to Damon — who loves to play an affable character hiding his true motives — it hits differently.
Damon and Affleck’s testy tête-à-tête takes place in a Hialeah stash house, where Dumars has led his team on the promise of a “rip,” a pile of drug money waiting to be seized by law enforcement. Dumars tells his team the money is in the tens or hundreds of thousands. But when they show up, they find a lot more than they bargained for: Around $20 million is hiding in the house’s walls.
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If “The Rip” was just a morality play about greed, it would fizzle out by the third act. But Carnahan’s script, which can get overly expository at times, introduces a secondary mystery early in the film. The team’s former commanding officer was killed – possibly in search of this very same stash house – and internal affairs suspects someone in the unit is dirty.
Brash detective Numa Baptiste (Teyana Taylor, “One Battle After Another”) and hardened single mother Detective Lolo Salazar (Catalina Sandino Moreno) exchange looks as they begin to count the stash. Earnest detective Mike Ro (Steven Yeun) is eying the stash house’s lone resident (Sasha Calle), who is also acting cagey. And Affleck and Damon circle each other like wolves, each seemingly convinced the other has done the unthinkable.
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“The Rip” takes a bit of time to get moving, with a lot of first-act chit-chat that lays the groundwork for a propellant second half. The script, by Carnahan and Michael McGrale, doesn’t live up to its cast’s pedigree. And though the film clocks in at under two hours, there is still some fat that could have been trimmed, including a finale that runs about ten minutes too long.
But none of these flaws are disqualifying, especially when you consider what Carnahan is trying to accomplish. “The Rip” is the type of movie that used to be purpose-built to earn $60-80 million at the box office and re-air on TNT or USA in perpetuity – a diverting burst of artillery fire to keep area dads in their recliners between the Patriots game and Sunday Night Football.
When done well (or reasonably well, as is the case this time) they can be load-bearing pillars in the Netflix content library. We won’t be seeing Affleck and Damon re-creating their “Good Will Hunting” speech at the Oscars for this one, but giving audiences a moderately entertaining two hours is good enough.
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Rating: **½ (out of 4)
“The Rip” is streaming on Netflix.
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