★★½ (2½ out of 4)
You’ve seen this kind of cops-and-robbers smackdown dozens—make that hundreds— of times before. But you’ve never seen Matt Damon and Ben Affleck do it together. So that’s a good (enough) reason to start streaming “The Rip” on Netflix where it lands without so much as a quick hello in theaters. That’s no way to treat two Oscar winners.
It’s the Mattfleck starshine and real-life camaraderie, plus the indisputable action bonafides of director Joe Carnahan, that sell “The Rip” even when formula threatens to overtake it. Damon plays Lieutenant Dane Dumars and Affleck is Detective Sergeant JD Byrne, Miami cops and longtime compadres who’ve been butting heads recently in scenes that Damon and Affleck play with spiky humor and understated warmth. Both have been called in regarding the murder of their captain, Jackie Velez (Lina Esco), a fact that hangs over the plot like a constant provocation.
It’s the Mattfleck starshine, plus the indisputable action bonafides of director Joe Carnahan, that sell this cop thriller when formula threatens to overtake it.
Dane and JD work a tactical narcotics unit that discovers a cartel stash north of $20 million. You could write the conflict on the head of a pin. Should they turn in the dirty money or rip it off? Amazingly, Carnahan keeps that moral pulse beating under the firepower with the subversive style he’s shown since “Narc.”
Everyone has their reasons to grab the rip, which is slang for “taking the bad guys’ money.” Dane is still shaken by the cancer death of his 10-year-old son. And hothead JD is pissed that Dane got the promotion JD was promised. And what about the other members of their squad, including freshly minted Golden Globe winner Teyana Taylor, aces as detective Numa Baptiste, Steve Yeun as straight arrow Mike Ro and Catalina Sandino Moreno as Lolo Salazar?
Like Dane and J.D., they weren’t’ expecting much, maybe a few hundred grand, when they found a kid named Desi (Sasha Calle) sitting on buckets of cash at a stash house allegedly belonging to her sweet grandmother. But 20 million gets even good cops thinking. But is everyone on this squad on the up and up? If that were true, there’d be no movie.
And there’s plenty of movie and a satisfyingly nasty final twist in this thriller, especially when new ingredients are added to the mix in the form of JD’s DEA agent pal Matty (Kyle Chandler), crooked local cops, mad-crazy-violent cartel bosses and some people you’d never expect of being evil at all. Nerves fray and tempers explode, along with the shoot-‘em-up fireworks that are a real Carnahan specialty.
Still, it’s Damon and Affleck who hold this package together, adding real flesh-and-blood stakes to the throwaway plot. Offscreen, they are just as involved. Their company, Artists Equity, reached a deal with Netflix that guarantees all 1,200 people involved in the nearly $100 million production will get a one-time bonus if “The Rip” performs well on the streaming service. In a fill chockablock with corruption, that off-camera gesture counts as truly heroic.