Directed By Joe Carnahan

Starring – Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Teyana Taylor

The Plot – The murder of a captain has remained unsolved for six weeks, mired in bureaucratic delays, leaving the officers of Miami’s Tactical Narcotics Team restless and eager for justice. Seeking an outlet for their frustration and perhaps a chance to secure something for themselves the team acts on a tip about a potential cartel stash. What they uncover is far more than they anticipated. Inside a derelict stash house, they discover millions in cash, and with it, the fragile bonds of trust within the team begin to unravel. As news of the massive seizure spreads, outside forces close in, and everything comes into question-loyalties, motives, and even who they can truly trust.

Rated R for adult language and violence

The Rip | Official Trailer | Netflix

POSITIVES

Say what you will about the lack of versatility in Joe Carnahan’s expansive filmography, but the man clearly sticks to what works, and within the parameters of a compelling murder mystery surrounding morally compromising cops, he’s able to effortlessly instill an abundance of tension and anxiety to the experience that helps to overcome some of the script’s sporadic hinderances, making it a bit better than a majority of Netflix produced action movies that come and go with the memorability of an 8th grade English paper. For starters, Carnahan wastes little time setting the pieces to motion within the persistent tempo of the movie’s pacing, allowing not only a maintained sense of urgency to the overall narrative that becomes hyperactive with already one of the year’s most riveting second acts, but also this overhanging cloud of ambiguity among his established characters that makes anything feel possible with the primary motivator of millions for the taking. While this ambiguity in characterization does create some unnecessary speed bumps to the storytelling the longer the film persists, it does do the necessary foot work in capturing and maintaining the attention of its audience, requiring them to focus on the air of their internalized responses with lingering camera work that vividly captures the complexity among their perspectives. It certainly helps that the conversations within Carnahan’s script are crafted with the same kind of snappy and stimulating dialogue that bring so many devilish details to the surface within the movie’s many scattered clues, appraising a believably lived-in dynamic among the history of the group that effortlessly appraises some much-needed chemistry within this decorated ensemble. Among them, it’s obviously Affleck and Damon who do the necessary heavy lifting towards stealing the opportunity of the engagement, not only with their real-life status as best friends offering a seamless reflection towards their fictional characters, but also with Affleck’s intensity being complimented by Damon’s calmly cool persona under pressure. It’s not the best or most defining performance of either man’s respective careers, but it does combat the notion that big name actors don’t deliver the same kind of energy to projects that will never make it to the silver screen, proving that each of them believed in this film and Carnahan to give viewers an exciting night in, and to that objective, they passed with flying colors. Lastly, while the action sequences aren’t anything groundbreaking or original, with regards to outlining or technical execution, they do pay the bottling of the movie’s constant tension off in ways that speaks volumes about the magnitude of this established conflict, featuring meticulously executed shaking camera captivity, a pulse-rattling electronic score from Clinton Shorter, and boldly immersive sound design that talk the talk when Affleck and Damon walk the walk. I’m rarely a believer in energetically exaggerated impulses in the presentation of a movie, as a result of their jolted consistencies often obscuring what’s vividly being depicted, but Carnahan and his longtime cinematographer, Juanmi Azpiroz, never compromise the integrity of their supercharged visuals with the immersive impulses of the movie’s direction, allowing highly impactful atmospheric rendering of danger and devastation without the steep cost of dizziness and dejection intruding directly upon the investment of the audience, in turn resulting in a highly impressionable climax during the movie’s closing moments, that stand among the best shots and edits of the entire movie.

NEGATIVES

While there’s plenty to love and appreciate about “The Rip” as a rainy day engagement, there’s nearly just as much that feels polarizing and dismissive about it, particularly with an uninspiringly underdeveloped screenplay full of Netflix-approved exposition dumps that takes a bit too many chances with its characters while playing towards a mystery that drives so much of the speculation about the engagement. As previously mentioned, Carnahan doesn’t spend a lot of time fleshing out these respective characters in ways that can competently produce the necessary emotional weight and empathetic stakes during vital scenes of untimely loss and uncovered discovery, leaving so many of them falling tragically flat in the damaging kinds of ways that make it difficult to grasp an investment towards them, and considering the movie begins with a highly questionable interrogation sequence that not only jumbles so many of the key details of set-up within this essential conflict, but also directly undercuts the momentum of the movie’s murder during a time when it requires unabashed focus, it left me feeling dejected from the conflict just as much as the characters, requiring this decorated ensemble to work overtime towards creating any semblance of compelling energy to make them have some kind of lasting impression to the movie’s integrity. This is where dejection turns to disappointment, as despite the stellar work from Affleck and Damon leading the charge to the movie’s prominence, the rest of the ensemble don’t conjure a single meaningful performance between them, with a complete lack of opportunity that never challenged them to make the roles their own, despite so much budding screen time between them. Steven Yeun, Kyle Chandler, Sasha Calle, and Scott Adkins are just a few of the unforgiveable examples of Carnahan’s fumbling, with this being one of the only films where Adkins hasn’t been utilized in a physical capacity, but even as unmemorable as each of them are, they pale in comparison to the tragic mishandling of Golden Globe winner, Teyana Taylor’s flatlined pulse here, where the emerging star of an actress is criminally deduced to counting money for a majority of the film, and considering this is a movie that revels in the limitless possibilities of deception, as a means to fuel the movie’s mystery, it seems downright silly that Carnahan wouldn’t capitalize on each of these names readying a tangible influence to the movie’s appeal, leaving only a thankless waste among them in roles that quite honestly could’ve been played by anybody. On top of this, the movie also falls suspect for every noticeable trope or cliche among the action genre kingdom, allowing its intriguingly gripping angle to deduce itself to telegraphed actions that make it feel like a descendent of one or a number of superior films before it. This is especially the case from a director like Carnahan, who has spent a career delivering on underrated action thrillers like “The Grey”, “Copshop” and “Smokin Aces”, chock full of attitude and resiliency, yet he settles for the cinematic equivalent of reheated leftovers, causing not only a complete lack of originality in the movie’s favor, but also a derivativeness to the material that constantly begs the question; “Why am I not watching the movie that this one constantly reminds me of?”.

OVERALL
“The Rip” is a tense and gritty corrupt cop crime thriller from Joe Carnahan that strikes just enough intrigue in the depths of its compelling mystery to overcome the hinderances of an uninspired and mostly derivative screenplay. With stoically supercharged performances from Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, eliciting a naturalistic element to their real-life bromance, as well as snappy dialogue that engages an audience among mostly ambiguous characters, the film offers just enough diverting thrills and situational skepticism to survive its flat characterization and vapid emotionality, stealing a night of sanctimony away from those couch-surfing few who never get tired of the same story.

My Grade: 6.7 or C+