Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are a real-deal Hollywood fairytale: childhood pals who made it to the Oscars stage (winning Best Original Screenplay together in 1998 for Good Will Hunting), with each becoming a movie star in their own right.
Every few years they’ll circle back to one another, co-starring in movies like Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel (2021) or sports biopic Air (2023), and they’ve recently established their own production company, Artists Equity, to ensure their crews can secure a bonus if the project is successful. It’s an endangered tradition in Hollywood production. A “Mattfleck” picture, then, has its own aura: a kind of rumpled decency and a straight-talking, Bostonian charm, best served with a side of Dunkin’ Donuts.
Now they’ve reunited for Netflix’s The Rip, which aspires to drum up a confrontation between them worthy of Michael Mann’s Heat (1995). Paired with writer-director Joe Carnahan, the maker of reliably sweary and abrasive films including Copshop (2021) and The A-Team (2010), they play Miami cops on the same tactical narcotics team, specialising in “rips” – the seizure of money, drugs, or weapons.
But when their latest “rip” unearths a stash of over $20m, old friendships fly out the window and everyone becomes a potential liability. It’s too tempting a payday not to at least consider pocketing the cash. Lieutenant Dane Dumars (Damon) has a broken-down marriage and a dead son, and bills are piling up. Detective Sergeant JD Byrne (Affleck), meanwhile, was passed over for promotion by Dane and hid a sexual relationship with a police captain (Lina Esco), who was recently shot dead by unknown assailants.
Anyone hoping for some fiery Affleck v Damon conflict, though, will find themselves disappointingly shortchanged. It’s a character piece that does very little with its characters, since it’s been afflicted with the Netflix curse of dialogue written exclusively for people who are busy scrolling on their phones.
Case in point: the TNT arrive to a home occupied by a young woman, Desi (Sasha Calle), who is quickly handcuffed to a kitchen chair and then periodically interrogated. At one point, Dane leaves his phone in her eyeline, with a lockscreen picture of a boy. She asks, with genuine confusion in her voice, “Who is that?” He answers, “My son.” Well, yes... who else would it be?
Affleck and Damon, at least, try to pump a little crotchety humanity into their characters. But any hope of suspense, any genuine mystery over who (if anyone) is on the path of betrayal, is swiftly dashed by how poorly defined these suspects are. We learn next to nothing about the rest of the team, a criminal waste of three separate Academy Award nominees: Steven Yeun, Catalina Sandino Moreno, and Teyana Taylor (potentially an Academy Award winner in two months). Carnahan makes sure the women are left behind when he finally delivers the film’s big, action sequence.
The only insight we’re allowed, really, is that these officers all think they’re vastly underpaid and underappreciated. One bemoans that they’re paid $80,000 (£60,000) a year after taxes to be “made to feel like a f***ing piece of s*** for being a sandbag between chaos and civilised society”. It’s as if we, the audience, should be awed, grateful, and surprised when a police officer isn’t corrupt.
It’s notable that this is the second major Netflix film in a fairly short window, after 2024’s Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, that seems to have a real axe to grind with anyone who dares to question the absolute power and lack of consequence police (specifically American police) currently enjoy. That’s certainly one way to wipe the charm off of a Mattfleck film.
Dir: Joe Carnahan. Starring: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Steven Yeun, Teyana Taylor, Sasha Calle, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Scott Adkins, Kyle Chandler. 112 minutes.
‘The Rip’ is streaming on Netflix
