There may not be a better film to watch on a streaming service with your old man than Joe Carnahan’s The Rip, an action thriller with just enough juice to keep them likely standing up in front of the television for the entirety of the runtime. Whether or not this is a good thing is up to you to decide, but for my money’s worth, there isn’t a better endorsement you can give to a Netflix movie like this one, especially one that seems highly engineered for people whose primary signs of being “locked in” are not sitting on their couch at all.
Discussion
The gist of The Rip is simple, but the fun in the picture lies within the ineffable on-screen chemistry of its lead stars, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, in their seventeenth acting collaboration. The two haven’t lost a step in portraying two police detectives with opposing views on how to handle a seizure of a significant amount of money they found after a crimestopper tip points them toward Desiree “Desi” Molina’s (Sasha Calle) home. In it, over $20 million in cash is found, and Sergeant JD Byrne (Affleck) tells his partner, Lieutenant Dane Dumars (Damon), that they need to go through the proper channels and inform their superiors of what has been discovered.
However, the FBI is still trying to find the cops who killed an officer on the trail of the cash that the two officers, alongside their team of detectives, Mike Ro (Steven Yeun), Numa Baptiste (Teyana Taylor), and Lolo Salazar (Catalina Sandino Moreno), discovered. There may be reason to believe that one (or more) of the officers on the rip was a part of the killing, and that the whole ploy is to snuff them out. The thing is, though, no one can be trusted, and this is where Carnahan’s screenplay gets really interesting. What the promotional materials don’t reveal onThe Rip is how subdued most of the film is, and how it’s mostly a chamber piece, with a minimal cast, primarily set inside Desi’s house, as Dumars’s team counts the money and begins to realize that something’s up.
Carnahan’s Direction
Carnahan is an astute action stylist, and it’s a shame that the two primary action sequences of The Rip are the Netflix film’s weakest sections. There are a couple of impassioned flourishes here and there, particularly when the Smokin’ Aces filmmaker and his go-to director of photography, Juan Miguel Azpiroz, dial up the tension built with an intense bout of action. Still, the overall canvas of its kinetics lacks emotional depth and bare-knuckled artistry. I mean, you cast Scott Adkins in your picture and not involve him in any of the film’s set pieces, let alone give him one moment of badassery?? That may be Carnahan’s most significant missed opportunity as a genre artist, but that doesn’t stop the rest of The Rip from not being a memorable piece of entertainment from one of the most underappreciated filmmakers working today.
It won’t take long for you to discover who’s behind the killing, and that’s perhaps the least interesting aspect of The Rip. However, it doesn’t stop Carnahan from staging some nifty (and classical) two-handed dialogue scenes between various protagonists as the audience begins to weed out who may (or may not) be a crooked cop. Of course, red herrings are constantly dropped in front of the audience. They could lead them to be deceived into thinking that the one consistently pointed at by Carnahan is the primary suspect. All of that doesn’t really matter when we feel a sense of unease between the characters, and the suspense becomes far more palpable when shots are fired than when the protagonists are merely threatened.
The Cast and Chemistry
Carnahan’s reputation as an actor’s director may not be the primary thing audiences think about when uttering his name. However, he’s genuinely very good in that department and lets his stars add immense texture to their respective portrayals, which, in turn, makes the environment of his picture feel lived-in. We fully buy into the alchemy Dumars has with Byrne and their longstanding friendship, which might be why their tense exchanges are so riveting to observe. It helps that Affleck and Damon both thrive on their natural charisma and still know how to command the screen, even after seventeen collaborations under their belt. Yet, even the more minor roles provide immediate detail on how their characters are approached.
Some side characters are a bit underdeveloped, but the core relationships at The Rip‘s heart are much stronger than I would have imagined. Inside Carnahan’s corpus, this feels more in tune with the subdued nature of The Grey than his explosive reimagining of The A-Team, but most of the rapport that each protagonist brings to one another obviously recalls his most acclaimed work, 2002’s Narc. The Rip may not be as complex as that film, but it’s certainly better than (the criminally underrated) Shadow Force and (the unwatchable) Not Without Hope. It’s a sizeable Hollywood production made for the dads of this world, and there isn’t a better movie you could watch on a streaming service to lock yourself in than most of the junk Netflix releases nowadays.
Final Thoughts on The Rip
Affleck and Damon’s chemistry is enough for the Netflix film to be an easygoing Saturday night viewing with a few small beers, and there’s enough formal juice here to slightly elevate the lack of great action in this. This almost doesn’t matter when the camera loves each actor in this fun thriller that, yes, kinda rips—job well done.
Joe Carnahan’s The Rip is now streaming on Netflix!
For more action, drama, and thriller-related news and reviews, follow The Cinema Spot on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram! Also, follow us on Letterboxd for further feature film, short film, and limited series reviews!
