Producers: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jeff Robinov, Kevin Walsh, John Graham and Alison Winter   Director: Doug Liman   Screenplay: Chuck MacLean and Casey Affleck   Cast: Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, Hong Chau, Michael Stuhlbarg, Paul Walter Hauser, Ving Rhames, Alfred Molina, Toby Jones, Jack Harlow, Ron Perlman, Toby Onwumere, Ronnie Cho and André De Shields   Distributor: Amazon MGM Studios/Prime Video

Grade: C

Doug Liman’s action dramedy has a lot going for it, in addition to the director’s proven way with such material: a couple of stars with individual charisma and good mutual spark, a strong supporting cast, and a heist script with potential to mix local Boston color with exciting set-pieces and cunning twists.  The real mystery, unfortunately, turns out to be not so much what goes wrong for the mismatched protagonists of “The Instigators” as why the movie as a whole collapses into tiresome mediocrity despite all the promising ingredients.

The focal characters are Rory (Matt Damon) and Cobby (Casey Affleck, who co-wrote the script with Chuck MacLean).  Rory’s a straight-arrow vet who’s deeply in debt for child support and, he suggests to his social worker/therapist Dr. Rivera (Hong Chau), suicidal over his inability to have contact with his son until the $32,000 is paid.  Cobby’s an alcoholic ex-con with criminal connections.

One of those is Besegai (Michael Stuhlbarg), an intense small-time boss who hides behind a legal front—a bakery he runs with his chubby underling Richie (Alfred Molina).  Besegai has a plan to rob corrupt Mayor Miccelli (Ron Perlman) of the loot he collects in cash “contributions” from wealthy favor-seekers at his campaign party on election night, when he’s expected to prevail once again.  Unfortunately Besegai’s crew has fallen apart, and he has to rebuild it quickly.  So he hires Rory and Cobby to pull of the heist, taking their orders from hot-tempered Scalvo (Jack Harlow).

Of course things go wrong.  Not only does Miccelli lose, but by the time the three robbers arrive at the boat when his party is being held, the cash has already been sent ashore.  Scalvo goes berserk and robs the mayor and his entourage of their valuables, including a silver bracelet Miccelli begs to keep, claiming it has sentimental value (although, as events will prove, its value to him depends more on greed than sentiment).  Worse, Scalvo kills a cop and is himself killed, Cobby is wounded, and he and Rory escape empty-handed and chased by the cops, Besegai’s stooge Booch (Paul Walter Hauser—after all, he wants his role in the mess kept quiet) and Miccelli’s enforcers (including Ving Rhames’ stoic, implacable Frank Toomey, who’s directed to get that bracelet back).  Cobby’s wound prompts Rory to ask Rivera for help, and worried that her patient might kill himself, she reluctantly becomes their pseudo-hostage, making their efforts to elude their pursuers even more complicated.

It’s hard to pinpoint why “The Instigators,” despite the constant twists and turns the script provides, ends up such a trifling exercise.  But the problems pile up.  Damon and Affleck have good rapport, but though their banter is sometimes amusing (Cobby’s frustration when Rory keeps asking Besegai questions as he lays out the plan, and then makes a point of writing down the answers, makes for an early highlight, and there are other clever back-and-forths along the way), it’s not consistently funny enough.  The explanations behind the choices the guys make to save themselves aren’t totally implausible, but they’re not particularly inventive.  One can understand why it was thought necessary to add a bit of romance to the equation, but Cobby’s flirting with Rivera (a pleasant but bland Chau) is just an offhand afterthought going nowhere.  Except for Stuhlbarg, who livens up his few scenes with manic energy, the bad guys are a pretty dull lot: Molina and Toby Jones (as the mayor’s financial advisor) are pretty much wasted, Rhames coasts along on his grim façade, and Perlman just bellows his way through the proceedings.  Naming one character John Wayne (Toby Onwumere) doesn’t help.

And while Liman and his behind-the-camera cohorts (including production designer Greg Berry, cinematographer Henry Braham and editors Saar Klein, William Goldenberg and Tatiana S. Riegel) stage competent action pieces—most notably a couple of vehicle chases and two building explosions—the result comes across as efficient rather than inspired, failing to elicit the adrenaline rush the director once was so capable of achieving.  (The visuals are also too dark and washed-out for comfort.)  Even Christophe Beck’s score seems to be going through the motions, and the decision to set wild rides through the city’s streets to Petula Clark’s musty “Downtown” reeks of flaccid nostalgia.

“The Instigators” isn’t awful, but it reminds you of many other movies, including ones made by Damon, Affleck and Liman, that were far more exciting and memorable.  If you decide to watch it, though, you might as well stick through the credits to find out what happens in the north to the real instigators behind this robbery-gone-south.  

Producers: Alex Saks, Jamey Heath, Blake Lively and Christy Hall   Director: Justin Baldoni   Screenplay: Christy Hall   Cast: Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, Jenny Slate, Hasan Minhaj, Kevin McKidd, Brandon Sklenar, Amy Morton, Alex Neustaedter, Isabela Ferrer and Brandon Skelnar   Distributor: Sony/Columbia Pictures

Grade: C

The weighty subject of domestic abuse gets glossy soapoperatic treatment in Justin Baldoni’s adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s 2016 bestseller.  With some standard-issue rom-com beats added to the mix, the combination of serious message and overripe packaging makes for a tonally unsteady, unsatisfying whole.

The movie begins with Lily Bloom (Blake Lively) returning to her bucolic hometown of Plethora, Maine for the funeral of her father Andrew (Kevin McKidd), the widely respected mayor whom she pointedly refused to visit during his last days.  Her distraught mother Jenny (Amy Morton) expects her to deliver a poignant eulogy at the upcoming service, but when Lily goes up to the pulpit, she freezes and abruptly walks out.

The reason for her attitude is revealed in one part of the bifurcated narrative that follows—an extended flashback parceled out in bits and pieces in which her younger self (Isabela Ferrer) gets romantically involved with handsome classmate Atlas Corrigan (Alex Neustaedter), who’s hiding out in the abandoned house next door after being tossed out by his mother, who, as he explains, likes men who beat her up.  Their relationship starts haltingly but advances to the bedroom, where a furious Andrew, who’s routinely beaten Jenny, finds them together and brutalizes the boy.  After Atlas is carted off to the hospital, he and Lily permanently separate and go their separate ways, he to the army and she to college in Boston.

Returning to Beantown after the attenuated service, Lily deals with her complicated grief and anger by stealing into a high-rise and moodily pondering the past while perched on a rooftop ledge.  Swarthy Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni, who also directs) bursts in on her reverie, angrily kicking over a patio chair; he’s a surgeon who’s just lost a young patient, and is taking the failure hard.  Thus they meet, cute in a rom-com way but with a sad undercurrent, reflecting the movie’s jumbled DNA.

It’s not clear what Lily’s been doing before now, but she impulsively decides to buy an empty store and open a flower shop, taking on ebullient Allysa (Jenny Slate), who wanders in as she cleans up the place,  as her assistant.  They will grow into best friends as the business prospers, and Lily shares in the happiness of Allysa and her ever-supportive husband Marshall (Hasan Minhaj) as they celebrate the birth of their first child.

But by then another figure has predictably entered the scene—Ryle, who tracks Lily down and proves the store’s first customer.  He also, in the story’s initial unlikely coincidence, turns out to by Allysa’s brother who—she warns Lily—is an inveterate womanizer.  But Lily sets aside her misgivings and gradually succumbs to Ryle’s undoubted charms.  They get married. 

All seems well until the happy couple visits a new restaurant whose owner is—you guessed it—Atlas (now Brandon Sklenar).  The attraction between him and Lily is palpable, and though they try to conceal it from Ryle, he notices it and becomes insanely jealous and, of course, abusive.  That only increases Atlas’ protective impulse, and he shelters Lily after Ryle’s raped her and she winds up pregnant. 

The situation, of course, confronts Lily with the ultimate dilemma: will she return to the penitent but volatile Ryle, following the example of her mother, who when asked by her daughter why she stayed with her husband all those years, replies that it was easier than leaving, and she loved him despite everything, or will she strike out on her own?  In short, will she give in to the cycle of domestic violence, or finally break free of it?  Hint: the title provides the answer.

Christy Hall, who wrote the screenplay for the movie, retained the absurdly overripe names in Hoover’s book—not just of the characters (Ryle? Atlas? Not to mention Lily Bloom) but of places (Plethora?)—which alone should be enough to demonstrate the story’s goofily melodramatic roots.  (Hall also wrote and directed the recent “Daddio,” a better piece about male-female relationships. One might wish she had added to Hoover’s names by changing Andrew to Leopold, or at least Leo.)  Baldoni directs with appropriate high-end sheen, abetted by his technical crew (production designer Russell Barnes, costumer Eric Daman, whose outfits for Lively are especially glamorous, and cinematographer Barry Peterson, who shows a propensity for widescreen luster).  Rob Simonsen and Duncan Blickenstaff contribute a score that adds to the upper-crust tone, but editors Oona Flaherty and Robb Sullivan have a hard time juggling the past-and-present plot switches smoothly.

Baldoni also contributes a magnetically compelling performance as the darkly handsome, toxically macho Ryle, while Neustaedter and Sklenar offer a stark contrast as the younger and older versions of the near-saintly Atlas.  Slate provides the appropriate verbal sharpness as the Rosalind Russell-style BF, and Minhaj smiles broadly as her loving spouse, the very model of the properly devoted husband.

Ferrer is touching as the demure young Lily.  But it’s Lively who must carry the picture, taking on a part that would have suited the stars of Hollywood’s golden age.  Alternately tremulous and strong-willed, fragile and determined, she covers the emotional gamut about as convincingly as the material allows—which, given Hoover’s heavy-handed contrivances, is not very far.

Hoover continued Lily’s story in her 2022 book “It Starts With Us,” so maybe a sequel is inevitable, if not necessarily desirable.