“The Rip,” a new Netflix original action movie directed by Joe Carnahan, relies heavily on the shoulders of real-life BFFs Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Clearly, writers Joe Carnahan and Michael McGrale knew that the lead actors’ friendship would be the reason why most people would watch this. The film opens with a Miami cop named Jackie being murdered. Her murder forces her crew of Dane (Damon), J.D. (Affleck), Mike (Steven Yeun), Numa (Teyana Taylor) and Lolo (Catalina Sandino Moreno) to look into who killed her because they suspect foul play. The group discovers millions of dollars during their investigation of a stash house for drug money, leading to distrust within the group and outside it.
For an action movie, this movie has no action. I was watching and waiting for something to happen. An hour or so into the movie, it still felt like an introduction. The pieces of the mystery were still falling into place, and the money at the stash house was just starting to be counted. The writers saved their “big” action set piece for the end, like most movies, but it didn’t deliver in scale or entertainment. The set piece consisted of one vehicle chase and a separate chase on foot. It seemed like they spent their whole budget on getting actors to sign on instead of creating something memorable.
Netflix has created this formula, which Damon has recently talked about in an interview, where dialogue reiterates the plot multiple times because Netflix suspects that people are on their phones while watching. Also, according to Damon, Netflix adds a bigger-than-normal action piece towards the beginning to keep the audience from clicking off the movie. This process creates movies that have no identity because it is all about this streamlined process to keep people watching instead of making something actually entertaining or new. Even with the big names attached, they add very little to the movie. They make it slightly better–keeping it afloat–instead of elevating it. All the characters are severely underdeveloped with little to no complexity. Taylor, who may win an Oscar this year, was barely used. Neither was Kyle Chandler, who is having a small resurgence in his career.
The mystery part was very convoluted yet very simplistic at the same time. It is convoluted in the fact that it never tells you anything to guess who was involved besides the one obvious person. It is very simplistic because it treats the big reveal of the obvious person as something new, despite showing him being suspicious the whole time. After the reveal, while tying up the story, the film tries to invent an emotional element despite it not being present the whole time. The only emotion the effort elicited was my irritation because it seemed to drag on.
So what did I like? The ticking clock feeling created some tension, especially when it came to finally starting to move the money. Despite the dark and bland look of the whole movie, I liked the scene where everything was revealed in the truck. The lighting went in and out, hiding the people inside in the darkness sporadically to create some tension. Shadows were actually used in ways to create some interesting visuals.
Besides that, I didn’t enjoy “The Rip” that much. It’s not the worst film in the world. Some may enjoy this movie more than I did, but I found the story and characters to be very lacking. I wouldn’t say they do their best, but Affleck and Damon are far from the problem. I would recommend going into this with the expectations of a middle-of-the-road Netflix original, and that’s all you need to know to get a good idea of the movie.
Final Verdict: Skip It (2/5).
Junior Ranon Travers is a Staff Writer. His email is rtravers@fandm.edu.