Ever since the critically acclaimed Good Will Hunting, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon have built a friendship that has lasted decades and has brought us one of Hollywood’s most well-known and successful collaborative duos. Now, after almost 30 years, they’re back with their latest offering, crime thriller The Rip. The film opens in dramatic fashion, when an officer is murdered by a mystery assailant, but not before she sends a text message that sets the wheels in motion for the entire plot of the film.
For those unaware of what exactly a “rip” is, it is a slang term for the major seizure of criminal assets, whether it be drugs, weapons or, in the case of this film, money. When Lieutenant Dane Dumars (Damon) receives an anonymous tip of a large sum of cash being hidden in a home, he takes his team out to investigate. It’s an all-star team as well, with Teyana Taylor and Steven Yeun joining Damon and Affleck on the rip. There is one wasted casting in the film however, as the great action star Scott Adkins, although incredibly believable as Ben Affleck’s brother, is given absolutely zero opportunity to showcase his martial artistry. He even finds himself being split up from a fistfight with his brother before he can around-the-house kick Affleck unconscious.
Matt Damon has revealed on the press tour for the film that when Netflix acquired the rights for the script, they requested some changes. The fact that the film starts in such an explosive way is because of their need to keep audiences interested from the beginning. It is perhaps because of this that they managed to place so much important dialogue in the opening few minutes; information important to the film’s conclusion is given little focus early on, in the hope that audiences haven’t stopped paying attention already. They also asked that the main plot points be reiterated multiple times throughout the film because people will be on their phones while watching.
This kind of underestimation in their audiences means there is often a painful amount of exposition thrown in our faces, which really negatively affects the film’s twists and turns and their impact. Netflix have done one thing right, however, as they made an unprecedented agreement with Artists Equity (the production company formed by Affleck and Damon in 2022) to provide a performance-based bonus to all 1,200 members of the cast and crew involved in the film, which alone is more than enough reason to give this a watch. The Rip is a good film that probably would have been a great one if Netflix hadn’t won the bidding rights and had its way with it.
