January has long been a B-movie buffet for those exhausted by prestige awards bait, a month when Gerard Butler and Jason Statham are suddenly commanding wide releases and often No 1 mini-hits. But as the former’s apocalyptic sequel Greenland 2: Migration lingers in the top five and the latter’s action romp Shelter prepares to premiere, we find two more prominent stars – Oscar winners Ben Affleck and Matt Damon – resigned to the small screen instead.
In a non-Netflix world, a film like The Rip – flashy, action-heavy, led by two household names – should be available this weekend on the biggest high-format screens across the country. But then in that same world, at this particular time, it’s doubtful that a film like this would even get made, granted a budget that’s reportedly close to $100m, highly unusual for R-rated non-IP. The streamer was, in fact, so keen to get it made that it has briefly agreed to change its pay structure, allowing Affleck and Damon to bring across their profit-sharing Artists Equity rule, by which each member of the cast and crew gets a bonus if the film performs well. So, as with many films at this weird moment, it’s a take-what-you-can-get situation and while it would have been preferable to see a film like this, which looks and feels like it was made in 2002, on the big screen, the landscape has dictated that the small will have to do.
It’s made by Joe Carnahan, a writer-director who broke out in that same year with crime thriller Narc, a film that was saved from direct-to-video ignominy by Tom Cruise, who boarded as exec producer. Since then, Carnahan has continued to attract other Hollywood action junkies such as Liam Neeson (The Grey and The A-Team), Gerard Butler (Copshop), Mel Gibson (Boss Level) and Affleck, whom he first worked with on 2006’s rather annoying caper Smokin’ Aces. I’d argue that Carnahan has only made one truly great film in The Grey, a grim, gruelling and surprisingly poignant survival thriller about men at the end of the world facing the end of their lives, but he’s proven himself to be a mostly solid genre hand. The system hasn’t found a place for him in the last few years (hands up if you’ve seen Kerry Washington dud Shadow Force or Zachary Levi disaster flick Not Without Hope) but The Rip, a project he developed with TV writer Michael McGrale, is a comfortable fit, the kind of film he would have been making back in his heyday.
As with Affleck’s last Netflix action vehicle, 2019’s Triple Frontier, it’s a sturdy, straightforward throwback to the theatrical movies of yesteryear, and as with that film it also concerns a fight over a considerable bounty. A film called The Rip led by cops might cause gruesome flashbacks to 2013’s Jeff Bridges-Ryan Reynolds paranormal police flop RIPD, but here a “rip” means something thankfully rather different and more of the real, physical world. Inspired by alleged true events, it refers to a stashed amount, here tipped off to a group of Miami officers led by Damon’s Dane and Affleck’s JD. They descend upon a seemingly normal suburban house, and led by an excitable money-sniffing dog, find more than $20m hidden in the attic. The team, which also includes Oscar-tipped Teyana Taylor and Oscar nominees Steven Yeun and Catalina Sandino Moreno, must then safely transport it – but who can be trusted with a rip like this?
Cue plenty of talk about jacking or robbing the rip, which no actor is quite able to normalise, and as talented as Damon and Affleck might be, some of their more bro-y, puffed-chest theatrics also ring a little false at this stage of their careers. But it’s otherwise something of a treat to watch them take on roles that would usually be sleepwalked by Butler and Statham, a sprinkling of truffle oil on a greasy roadside burger. There’s their obvious longtime chemistry, but they’re also serious dramatic actors who are able to bring some humanity to rote, underwritten tragic backstories (dead kid versus dead girlfriend, etc). There’s little else for the other actors to really chew on, although, as the young woman living in the house, Sasha Calle has a real striking presence, her rising, clammy fear at what’s to come helping crank up the tension.
Carnahan, working with a budget he hasn’t been this close to for years, is a brash, cocksure and entirely unsubtle director, raised on Simpson-Bruckheimer cinema, and, while it might not look quite as expensive as it actually is (one imagines the Damon-Affleck paydays were considerable), the film has a forceful swagger to it. The mystery, when over-unfolded, isn’t as tantalising and Agatha Christie-adjacent as Carnahan would have you believe, although I did get a kick out of seeing a flashback-heavy sub-Poirot explanation delivered in the back of a DEA truck. After that it’s wall-to-wall action and while it’s competently staged, it’s a shame the female characters are sidelined, despite the three possessing enough tenacity to easily play the boys at their own game. The Rip is ultimately a game for the boys, though, and taken as a piece of boisterous macho pulp, it’s a propulsive enough four-beers-in watch. A movie to be enjoyed on Friday night and forgotten all about by Saturday morning.
