Stream It or Skip It?

Martin and Lewis, Abbott and Costello, peanut butter and chocolate… Affleck and Damon? The Rip (now on Netflix) pairs brothers-from-other-mothers Ben Affleck and Matt Damon for their first major roles together in 25 years, under the eye of veteran action-thriller director Joe Carnahan (Copshop, The Grey). And, well, are we excited to see them, sharing a manly action flick, playing hard-bitten running-and-gunning cops? Sure? Why not? It’s not like they were gonna make Better Will Hunting or Air Buds or The Next-to-Last Duel.

THE RIP: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

The Gist: The TNT is on the verge of blowing up. That’s Tactical Narcotics Team, a division of the Miami Police Department. Why? We open on one of their own, Jackie Velez (Lina Esco), being gunned down by two masked dudes with shotguns. Her death likely has to do with a brewing corruption scandal where bad cops find cartel cash stashes and help themselves to some paper. Jackie was one of the good ones. All this is why the Feds have descended upon the TNT offices with steely glares and steelier questions, prompting a tough SOB like Det. Sgt. JD Byrne (Affleck) to snap, “When’s the last time you guys caught a cop killer in a conference room?” It’s tense. And Byrne and his TNT compadres, Lt. Dane Dumars (Damon), Det. Mike Ro (Steven Yeun), Det. Numa Baptiste (Teyana Taylor) and Det. Lolo Salazar (Catalina Sandino Moreno), are all feeling the squeeeeeeeeeeeze. Of course, it doesn’t help that Byrne’s brother (Scott Adkins) is one of the Feds, or that Byrne was Jackie’s main squeeeeeeeeeeeze. 

These are the types of movie cops who drop f—s every other word, and piss and moan constantly, and when someone asks how they’re doing they say things like “Tryin’ to find a f— to give.” The crew hangs on a loading dock after work with a whiskey bottle saying effin’ this and what the eff is that when Dumars gets a tip on a stash house. Everyone groans because it’s 6 p.m. on a Friday and they got a job and got shit to do. Off they go, with Dumars leading the way in a vintage all-muscle Mustang. Now don’t think I didn’t notice that Dumars, as he rounds up his guys and gals, tells each one different numbers – the stash is 150, it’s 250, it’s 75, and please add a “k” to the ends of those digits. Seemed like something worth noticing. The location is in the suburb of Hialeah, and they rumble past the bullethole-riddled city limits sign declaring it the “city of progress,” an encouraging detail for those of us pressing play to see some hot live nude action violence.

It’s also worth noting that the title of the movie references slang for the pile of money they’re about to find. “The rip,” it’s called. Whether real cops or just movie cops or even just these specific movie cops in this specific movie use the term, I’m not sure. It sorta makes sense in this context if you jump to the conclusion that it’s short for “ripoff,” as in taking what isn’t yours – but it’s definitely pithy and monosyllabic and exactly the type of thing a screenwriter like Carnahan would build a movie around. Dumars and Byrne and everyone gets to the house and the only one home is a young harmless-looking woman, Desi (Sasha Calle), who claims she inherited the home from her dead grandmother and it’s in probate and she doesn’t really know why the whole house is trashed save for one neat and clean attic room. Salazar’s K9 beagle sniffs out the dough behind the attic wall and whaddayaknow, it’s not 150 or 250 or 75 but 20 – million. Yeah, whoa nelly. Literal bucketfuls of cash. And now is the time to either call this one in or kevlar up before other interested parties come running and gunning. 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Let’s play a game of Let’s Remember Some Carnahan Movies: Smokin’ Aces – nah. The A-Team – DOUBLE nah. Stretch – didn’t know it existed. Boss Level – eaten by COVID. Shadow Force – forgot it existed. Just watch The Grey, because it rules and features Liam Neeson fighting wolves with his damn bare hands, and Narc, because it’s a post-Goodfellas highlight for Ray Liotta. 

Performance Worth Watching: Let’s see, Affleck, Damon, Taylor, Yeun, Moreno, Kyle Chandler turns up in a few scenes – that’s a lot of talent for a movie that doesn’t ask any of these people to do anything particularly exceptional. 

Sex And Skin: Nothin’.

Our Take: Byrne lost his girlfriend and Dumars lost his little boy to cancer and Affleck and Damon each get one-to-three moments of earnest reflection when a hint of melancholy creases across the foreheads of their stoic faces. Then they get right back to stomping through scenes, throwing around cop lingo, getting shot at, shooting at the guys shooting at them, finding themselves tangled in twists and double-crosses (or maybe orchestrating some of them?), and all that. And The Rip is one of those and all that movies, ones that deserve a not-insignificant degree of dismissiveness, this being a shrugworthy Carnahan endeavor that squanders its talent for a thoroughly unmemorable run on the genre treadmill. 

Taylor and Moreno anchor a mid-film moment that seems to be getting at something: Their characters follow cop procedure and get to counting all the cash on site, and they ponder whether anyone will miss one little stack. One little stack that would change the life, at least a little bit, of a hardworking cop with a dangerous gig and a paltry salary. That’s an idea, and this movie shows only fleeting interest in it. Characters and their dynamics are far down the priority list, behind some flaccid B-movie paranoia and tension, and the requisite shootouts and stakeouts and chases that theoretically draw in audiences looking for a little testosteronic chutzpah. 

The Rip delivers as advertised, albeit in a disappointingly unmemorable manner compared to Carnahan’s better films. The writer/director shows at-best modest interest in filling the vast spaces between brief conversations of economic hardship and Affleck/Damon brow-furrows with dynamically composed and choreographed action; beyond a few stylistic flourishes, this is boilerplate stuff playing precisely like what it is, a direct-to-streaming movie of limited scale (and budget seemingly, a bit curious considering the star power involved) that’s being dumped into the typically snoozy January release schedule. If a good genre exercise is the equivalent of a $10 million rip, this one’s worth about what you’d put down on a gently used Subaru Outback. 

Our Call: Just fast-forward to the final shot of Damon and Affleck watching a sunrise together on the beach, craft your fanfic and be on your way. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.