The Rip

dir: Joe Carnahan

2026

It’s been a long time coming, but at least it’s finally here.

No, I’m not talking about Matt Damon and Ben Affleck reuniting in front of the cameras to star in a movie together: I mean I’m glad Joe Carnahan has finally made a decent movie again.

The last one of his I watched that was okay wasn’t that great, being Copshop for which I could describe with many clichés, which instead I’ll rely on one: it’s very much the definition of overegging a pudding. There’s a lot of shlock in his filmography, and the last genuinely great flick he made was The Grey with Liam Neeson fighting Alaska and wolves, in that order, and coming off second best.

Before that… it was Narc, with Jason Patric, and that was like the early 2000s, so a lot of time and money has been wasted in between.

This isn’t perhaps a great showcase for Carnahan as a director, because this was made for Netflix, meaning it’s a very Netflixian kind of movie. The main characters spend a lot of time repeating the plot and what’s going on, in case the audience watching the flick has had at least one of their eyes glued to their phone for much of the flick’s duration.

It’s okay. It can be a bit irritating if you’re the kind of viewer who pays attention and actually likes watching movies, and it might prompt a few exasperated “we know, we get it, get on with it” like statements. But for people who like doing chores like folding laundry when they watch their stories on the streamers, it’s probably greatly appreciated that the premise is often restated for their benefit, so they don’t get too lost.

The Rip feels like a shitty title, but it’s not that egregious, especially since they restate the title of the film throughout the movie. “What’s the rip? We’re going to the rip. How much is the rip? Where’s the rip? Have I told you lately that I love you, and I love rips?” Eventually you’ll realise you can’t live without saying “rip” a few times every few minutes, just to maintain a serious demeanour.

I have to say that, yes, I am that cheap a date that seeing Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in a flick together again so long after their fresh faced debuts in Good Will Hunting and as two fallen angels in Kevin Smith’s Dogma all these years later is a kick, is a trip, because damn, they old, which means we old.

They look and act like sad dads, 99 per cent of the flick. Mad dads for the other 1 per cent. They have beards too, but they’re not paunchy, middle-aged and spending all their time online arguing with other middle-aged losers about the tanks used in World War II. They’re working career cops not two days before retirement, who maybe have been in long enough and become mean and cynical enough to maybe be corrupt as well.

They are Miami cops, part of a narcotics squad, and their leader we see murdered in the film’s opening minutes. Receiving a tip about a cartel stash house, all of Damon’s character’s staff converge on this address, and bask in the glory of tens of millions of dollars.

Money? Physical money? Paper? Remember that stuff?

I haven’t handled physical money in months. In December I had to go to a work end-of-year lunch where this supposedly upmarket restaurant refused to split bills and wouldn’t accept paywave / tap-and-go either. Yes, I get that you don’t want to pay taxes to the government, but that shouldn’t obligate me to run around for half an hour trying to find a working ATM. Prior to that occasion, the last time I touched physical money was six months previous, maybe, when I had to take money out to pay the dog grooming lady who does such a tremendous job on our little baby rat dog that I happily go to the trouble of helping her hide her income.

What I’m saying is, cash is a fucking hassle. In this year of our Lord, which is somehow 2026, it seems strange to me that there would need to be houses filled with literal tonnes of money arising from criminal activities. I thought this was what crypto currencies were invented for, that and fleecing crypto-bros of their hardly earned parent’s money?

But I don’t know anything about crime, so maybe I should shut the fuck up and describe the many and varied delights of this flick instead.

There’s the central pair of Dumars and Byrne (Damon & Affleck), but they have three other underlings along for the ride as well, being Lolo, Numa and Ro (Catalina Sandino Morena, Teyanah Taylor and Steve Yeun). All five of them have worked together for years, but something like this, a “rip” like this, where they officially go in and grab a bunch of some criminals’ money, or so much money could make loyal co-workers shoot each other in the face, we’re meant to think.

So for at least half of the film we’re wondering if Dumars is going to rip off the rip, and either include his crew, not include his crew, let them live or get them killed, or if it’s going to be Byrne. They sure do argue a lot, and Byrne smokes a lot of cigarettes, and often in places and contexts where it’s completely inappropriate.

People who do that? You just know that they ain’t no good.

I don’t mean smoking in general: a lot of the finest members of humanity have been smokers. I mean people or characters who smoke these days in offices, or on public transport, or in neo-natal intensive care units, or on stage in a full theatre as they do stand up. You know, they’re declaring to you, that they are shitty people happy to inflict their toxic bullshit onto everyone.

One of the funniest things for me, and it’s a tad, a scooch unfair, I’ll admit, that Affleck’s entire look, character and mannerisms seem to almost link with the whole “Sad Affleck” meme from around 2016, where he’d been photographed smoking a cigarette and looking utterly fucking exhausted.

He’s taken that look and that energy, and rolled it up with the anger that comes from being middle-aged and divorced, multiple times, with an array of children, step-children and ex-wives that might hate yer guts, and, like many jerks in this world, takes it out on his co-workers.

The dynamic is as such: reiterating how much he respects and admires his co-worker / supervisor, and he’s totally not jealous about him getting the promotion, to being all “fuck you, I’m going to get the money” to “you’re all against me, why doesn’t anyone love me?” back to “I am going to burn down the world.”

The other three ‘younger’ ones aren’t as complicated, except that Ro keeps texting with someone, even though everyone else gave up their phones as an internal security measure, and he seems convinced that maybe the bearded sad dads are dirty and are planning on stealing the evil cartel money.

Lolo and Numa seem happy to just count the money, which, considering how much of it there is, will take a long time.

Since as a movie this has the vibe of “bunch of crooks / cops get trapped in a location with a treasure, how long before someone comes along to take it from them / they all turn on each other and die / ain’t none of them getting the treasure” which dates back to the early days of cinema, so there is a long rich tradition to plunder in service of plot. Your primary worry, you’d think, is surely the cartel is going to send goons to murder everyone and save the money. This is, after all, mostly set in a house at the end of a cul-de-sac, or court as we call them in Australia. There are nice suburban houses around, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone else in them.

Someone comes after them, but it’s not the cartel. No, cops wouldn’t turn on their own, would they? But cops are such wonderful avatars of justice at all times, especially in Trump’s America!

I have to say even as I was very familiar with this kind of set up having seen it at least 14,783 times before, and that I picked who the ‘real’ bad guy would turn out to be within a second of them appearing onscreen, this flick still managed to surprise me. It wasn’t the twists or turns of the plotting, which trudges along stodgily, so much as that it manages to tell us what the outcome is going to be very early on, but it does it in a manner which we don’t take seriously; we don’t think it’s important.

And it ends up being completely and entirely important in the end, seeing how this is somehow based, of all things, on a true story. I don’t want to spoil any elements, because I think this is an enjoyable flick, and it should be watched without any foreknowledge, which you should never really need for a flick with people yelling intensely at each other restating plot points for most of the time, with action set pieces at exact timed 1/3 intervals of the overall running time.

The action was fine, if I have any significant complaint it’s that they have the legendary Scott Adkins in the flick, and they don’t even let him fight, not once. Not one punch, not one kick. That’d be like having Dolly Parton in your flick and not letting her sing, or Al Pacino in a role where he doesn’t yell at people.

Even though most of it transpires at night, or in the dark confines of a house at night, the actors and their actions are fairly clear and straightforward, which means it’s well shot by cinematographer Juan Miguel Azpiroz.

Time makes fools of us all, age more so, but it’s enjoyable enough to see Damon and Affleck together again, with all the accumulated experience and crustiness they’ve gained over the decades. Whatever mockery I might make of either of them, Affleck has directed some very excellent movies over the years, and Matt Damon has… been in a lot of movies.

I’m sure they’re doing okay.

7 times no-one goes swimming not once and gets caught in an actual rip out of 10

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“You got a Colombian flag hanging over the fireplace downstairs. We're cops, so it kinda takes the mystery outta who the money might belong to.” – that’s a bit racist, don’t you think? - The Rip