Producers: Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Dani Bernfeld and Luciana Damon Director: Joe Carnahan Screenplay: Joe Carnahan Cast: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Steven Yeun, Teyana Taylor, Sasha Calle, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Scott Adkins, Kyle Chandler, Néstor Carbonell, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Lina Esco, Cliff Chamberlain, Alex Hernandez and Daisuke Tsuji Distributor: Netflix
Grade: C-
Like so many Hollywood action movies, “The Rip” is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Except for a stellar but indifferently used cast, Joe Carnahan’s movie is a totally undistinguished specimen of a tired genre.
It begins with the assassination of Captain Jackie Velez (Lina Esco), the head of the Miami PD’s Tactical Narcotics Team, by a couple of masked gunmen after a car chase. But she manages to get off a phone message before expiring. Her death is especially disturbing for one member of the TNT, Sergeant JD Byrne (Ben Affleck) who, it turns out, had been romantically involved with her.
As the tragedy sinks in, Velez’s deputy, Lieutenant Dane Dumars (Matt Damon), announces that he’s gotten a tip about a house in Hialeah being used to store drug money and takes the team—including Byrne, Mike Ro (Steven Yeun), Numa Baptiste (Teyana Taylor) and Lolo Salazar (Catalina Sandino Moreno) to the address. Its sole occupant is Desi Molina (Sasha Calle), who recently inherited the place from her deceased grandfather.
The cops find a stash of cash in the otherwise suspiciously empty attic, and Dumars sets the team to work protecting the premises while counting the money. He’s apparently concerned, given rumors circulating about crooked police keeping cash they seize in drug houses, that informing their superiors could lead to trouble. But Byrne suspects that he might be planning to steal the money himself, and manages to tell DEA agent Matty Nix (Kyle Chandler) what’s going on.
Meanwhile the team receives threatening calls, which they assume are coming from the cartel that controls the neighborhood. Then the house is rocked by gunfire from outside, and though the attackers are driven off, Salazar is wounded. Byrne arranges a call from a cartel leader denying that his group was responsible and giving up the cash while suggesting that Velez’s murder was an inside job. The growing schism in the team is interrupted by the arrival of Nix, who takes Dumars, Byrne and Ro in his armored car while leaving Baptiste and Salazar to guard Molina. It’s during the ride back to the city that revelations occur about widespread corruption and the reason behind Velez’s murder. More gunplay and car chases occur after Byrne’s brother Del (Scott Adkins), an FBI agent, shows up; a sappy sunrise valediction to Velez’s memory on a beach closes things.
The twists Carnahan contrives in the last act are apparently intended to be clever but are actually rather limp, and the script’s back-and-forth structure, alternating dull dialogue sequences—filled with ostensibly tough-guy lingo in which every second sentence features a string of F-bombs—with gun battles and vehicular mayhem makes for an enervating brew. He, editor Kevin Hale and the stunt crew handle the action moments decently but without any special imagination, and neither the grubby production design (Judy Becker) nor the murky cinematography (Juan Miguel Azpiroz) is especially appetizing. Clinton Shorter contributes one of those dreary scores consisting of droning subterranean moans punctuated by frantic action beats.
What might have possessed Affleck and Damon to choose such familiar material is unclear. Maybe it was the chance to sleepwalk their way through the movie, or grab big paychecks, or just to sport unattractive facial hair. In any case, their performances are unexceptional; any number of journeymen actors could have done equally well in these roles. The rest of the cast are equally unremarkable in parts that might have been AI-generated.
It’s disheartening to think that this mediocre piece is likely, given its Netflix release, to have a far greater viewership than the last action Damon and Affleck did together, Ridley Scott’s 2021 medieval opus “The Last Duel,” which bombed although it was a far more intelligent and compelling picture than this one.