Is ‘The Rip’ Based On A True Story? Jake William Casiano Tribute Card Explained

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck don’t know who to trust—and that includes each other—in their new crime thriller, The Rip, which began streaming on Netflix today.

Written and directed by Joe Carnahan—a director known for his action movies like The Grey and Narc—The Rip stars Damon and Affleck as two Miami cops who discover a large stash of cash in a cartel house. They know they don’t have much time before somebody shows up to get back the money. But unfortunately, in Miami, protocol dictates that police officers must count any seized cash on site. So, the team gets to work on counting the cash, while knowing the bad guys are closing in.

In addition to Matt and Ben, The Rip cast includes Steven Yeun, Teyana Taylor, Sasha Calle, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Scott Adkins, Kyle Chandler, Néstor Carbonell, and Lina Esco. If you think the granular details in The Rip seem based in a reality, you’d be right. Read on to learn more about The Rip true story and the real Miami cop, Chris Casiano, who inspired Carnahan to write the movie.

Is The Rip movie based on a true story?

The Rip was inspired by a true story of a Miami cop who uncovered $20 million stashed in a house. However, the real incident was not nearly as dramatic, dangerous, or tense as the scenario you see play out in the movie. Basically, the set-up of the movie did happen in real-life—and Matt Damon’s character, Dane Dumars, was based on Casiano—but nothing else that came after is based on reality.

Writer/director Joe Carnahan got the idea from his friend, Chris Casiano, a real Miami cop who once encountered a huge sum money stashed in a house, while he was supervising a tactical narcotics squad in Miami.

“Chris Casiano, who’s a cop in Miami, used to supervise a tactical narcotics squad in Miami,” Carnahan said in an interview for The Rip production notes. “He had told me this story prior, about going into this guy’s home and finding $24 million in his wall. He was lovely, and he let me really delve into his life and tell this traditional cop thriller with this deeply emotional personal bent to it.”

Casiano first told Carnahan the story of his real-life rip while consulting on another movie the director made about Miami-based cops, 2020’s Bad Boys for Life. In the same interview for the production notes, Casiano recalled that he and Carnahan “bounced ideas off of each other, and it just blossomed.”

In an interview with Decider, Carnahan elaborated on what was and was not true to reality in his movie. While there were no dirty cops, corruptions, or shoot-outs over the money in real life, Carnahan said “All that stuff about counting [the money] on the seizure, on scene, is all true. You’re required to count it twice, actually, by hand.”

In fact, Carnahan said the real-life rip took 42 hours to count. “We couldn’t make a 42-hour movie. Certain things were expedited, certain things were snipped, and and so on.”

One detail that was changed was the owner of the house where the money was stashed. In the movie, the owner is a woman named Desi, played by Sasha Calle. “In real life, that was an older man,” Carnahan told Decider. “At some point they sat this guy down to start counting. [Laughs.] They had to get the guy that owned the place also counting! If you’re off by a dollar, Internal Affairs gets involved. This is a very real thing.”

No one came to attack Casiano and his team during the real rip, but the Miami officer did notice cameras in the house, which made him suspicious that his team was being watched, and that someone might be on the way to get the money. “Joe and I started building off of that aspect,” Casiano said. “It’s suspenseful: ‘Who’s a bad guy? Are the cops dirty? Is the cartel going to show up and kill everybody? What’s going on?’”

In other words, Casiano’s experience was the jumping-off point for a largely fictional story.

That said, Matt Damon’s character was based on Casiano, including the detail that Damon’s character, Dane, was grieving the death of his 11-year-old son. In real life, Casiano’s son, Jake William Casino, died due to complications with cancer, at the age of 11 in May 2021, according to Casiano’s Instagram page.

The Rip ends with a dedication card, “In loving memory of Jake William Casino.”

In his interview with Decider, Carnahan explained that The Rip “was me trying to conceive something that would help my friend deal with grief—the crushing, agonizing, sadness that that would bring. It’s a parent’s worst nightmare. Nobody wants to outlive their child. I can’t think of a worse fate. [This was] a clumsy way of of trying to give him something. Through art, we could build a memorial, a monument, to Jake and his time here—his short, 11-year life.”

Damon spent time with his real-life counter part down in Miami, and even went on a ride-along with him.

“The person I play in the movie is actually based on the person I rode along with,” Damon said in an interview for The Rip production notes. “Which is incredible when you get that as an actor, access to somebody where you can just ask as many questions as you want and get a sense of what their life is like, what the pressures are on them, how they might handle situations like this.”

So, in conclusion, while The Rip was inspired by a real event, and while Matt Damon’s character is based off a real guy, most of the movie—including the whole dirty cop plot line—is made up.