Buckets of Money

Hollywood doesn’t really have A-list talent anymore, not like it used to. A couple of decades back movies could be sold on the star power of the celebrities in its lead roles. Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman, these were names that brought audiences to theaters, put asses into seats. It was the Hollywood model that worked for years, taking actors and, effectively, making them into IP. Tom Cruise could play the same kind of character in every movie he was in, but he was a reliable actor that was charismatic and fun. Audiences liked him, and his name meant a mid-range film could make blockbuster bank.

That all changed during the 2000s and 2010s. Hollywood discovered, during that time, that audiences would react just as well to a licensed IP as they would to a star, and IPs were easier to work with because you didn’t have to keep a star around if they got all uppity and asked for fair pay for fair time on set. People wanted to see superheroes and they didn’t care as much if the actor playing the hero changed so long as the hero returned (look at the recasting of Warmachine and the Hulk as two examples). This meant that stars weren’t as important so long as superheroes remained bankable.

And then superheroes suddenly became far less bankable and suddenly Hollywood didn’t know what to do. They spent all that time downplaying stars so that they could sell their franchises that once the franchises started turning away audiences Hollywood didn’t have many carefully cultivated stars they could lean back on. Mostly what they had were the old guard, the stars that came up in the 1980s and 1990s, and they had to hope audiences would want to see these guys again, in some form, to draw eyeballs in and put butts in seats.

NetflixOriginally started as a disc-by-mail service, Netflix has grown to be one of the largest media companies in the world (and one of the most valued internet companies as well). With a constant slate of new internet streaming-based programming that updates all the time, Netflix has redefined what it means to watch TV and films (as well as how to do it)., of course, isn’t worried so much about ticket sales but they still do want asses in seats. Those seats may be at home, on your couches, but Netflix wants you watching. They need reliable films just as much as any other studio, and that means using whatever stars they can get, when they can get them, to make a bankable movie. So when Ben Affleck and Matt Damon want to make a movie, Netflix gladly would accept their film. They’re two of the closest Hollywood still has to A-list stars that audiences know. Sure, they’re in their 50s and aren’t going to draw in Gen-Z/Gen-Alpha like the younger set might, but you take what you can get when the well has been run dry. Like with everything Netflix does, a decision like this feels all too corporate.

But it does let these two guys make a $100 Mil film that, two decades ago, likely would have gotten its run in theaters and been a solid performer all the way through home video. Affleck and Damon have spoken about how hard it is to get an non-IP, mid-budget film off the ground, citing the collapse of the DVD market (ironically in no small part due to Netflix). Just being able to make their movies is a big deal now, even if they have to do it with Netflix. So the big corporation teamed up with two A-list (ish) stars, and we have, well, a pretty safe movie all things considered. They brought us The Rip, and it’s fine. The only reason the film is even remarkable at all is because Damon and Affleck are in it and they made it for Netflix. The film itself, though, isn’t anywhere near as interesting as the elements at play that lead to it getting made.

The Rip focuses on the Miami-Dade Police Tactical Narcotics Team (TNT). The team has been under investigation by Internal Affairs, and the FBI, because its former captain, Jackie Velez (Lina Esco), was gunned down at night, seemingly in a hit connected (just maybe) to missing drug money. Everyone is under suspicion, including the TNT team, led by Lieutenant Dane Dumars (Matt Damon) and his second-in-command Detective Sergeant J.D. Byrne (Ben Affleck).

Dumars gets a text from a number letting him know about a stash house with a lot of money. Seemingly wanting to get the money for himself and not the police, he gathers his team and leads the squad to the stash house. There they find not a few hundred thousand in drug cash, like they expected, but easily over $20 Mil, all neatly tucked away in a wall, stored in painter buckets. That’s a lot of money to try and get out without someone, cartels or dirty cops, trying to steal it from them. But Dumars also doesn’t know who he can trust, one way or the other, among his own team. Is anyone dirty? Is anyone not? And do they know what happened to Velez? Whatever happens tonight, at the stash house, will answer all those questions.

The Rip is a pretty basic movie, once it gets going. It’s set mostly at the stash house, in just a couple of rooms, with most of the “action” (aside from three big set pieces) being the drama among the characters and not the shooting of guns. It works at all because it’s led by Damon and Affleck, two great actors who have also been friends for decades so they have a very easy, lived-in chemistry between them. They take the audience and help them slide right into the setting, the characters, and the dynamics at play, because they’re solid actors and we trust them.

With all that being said, The Rip is so basic that even when it tries to be twisty and turny it really never works. It sets up crosses and double-crosses, but the writing is so basic that you can see all of them coming from a mile away. It thinks you’ll be surprised when one member of the team turns out to be dirty, or when someone they trusted becomes a criminal ringleader… but you’re not. The writing is so obvious, the twists and turns are so clearly telegraphed, that there really aren’t any surprises at all.

Plus, bluntly, the action sucks. It’s all done with shaky cams and fast editing, likely to obscure the fact that these are a couple of fifty-something dudes playing action heroes when, clearly, their bodies aren’t up to it like they used to be. That might seem surprising considering Affleck was Batman just a few years back, but when you consider so much of superhero cinema is done with CGI, Affleck likely didn’t have to do many of his own stunts then. If he did them here it’s hard to tell because everything is shaken, stirred, and obscured beyond a point where you can comprehensibly see what’s going on.

That leaves us, then, with good actors stuck in a pot-boiler that barely boils, accented by action that’s rarely ever exciting. The fact that The Rip works at all is because of Damon and Affleck who very rarely put in bad performances when they’re sharing the screen. These two are great actors, and I’m glad they continue to find ways to make movies even in a Hollywood climate that has no interest in making their kinds of movies. It would just be nice if they got to make a movie that was, well, any good at all.