Eternal Affairs: Ben Affleck and Matt Damon Reunite, Again, for ‘The Rip’

But heading into its third full year of operation, a clear identity is emerging for Artists Equity. They make movies on a pragmatic scale and take swings that are more likely to net Golden Globes than Oscars when their films lean prestige. They’re also interested in red meat like Matt, Casey Affleck, and Doug Liman’s inexplicably sleepy The Instigators for Apple TV in 2024, and now The Rip, projects that understand Netflix and direct-to-consumer studios like it are going to pump money into algorithmic couch pleasers, so why not take the money and aspire to make the best versions of these B-movies possible, with stars and accomplished directors? 

The Rip is a classic Friday Night Delivery Pizza Movie—not from the sitdown Neopolitan place on that gentrified commercial strip in your neighborhood; this demands a cheap, reliable pie from a slice shop—you enjoy with your dad or your kids as the men and women with big guns onscreen say the name of the film once every five minutes with straight faces. It’s the underappreciated economy-plus R-rated fun commercial genre movie auteurs like John McTiernan once made, picking up Hollywood’s hot-potato scripts and building careers on them. This is largely thanks to Carnahan, who debuted nearly 30 years ago with a film called Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane, and still loves a testosterone-drenched set piece featuring two dudes screaming nose to nose, daring each other to “take it there.” Carnahan has endured a tumultuous near 30 years in the industry, and after a string of bombs, may finally have found his ancestral home, staying away from theaters altogether and directing his carnal, visceral low-stakes, high-adrenaline cinema in the box-office-free realm of streaming. 

The Rip purports to be based on events surrounding the Miami River Cops scandal in which a rogue unit of officers ran a criminal organization out of a Floridian precinct in the ’80s, but takes that true crime and spins it into two concurrent Gerard Butler premises. One is a whodunit surrounding a murdered cop. The other revolves around a raid that turns up a haul far greater than what a mysterious tip led a squad of disgruntled detectives to believe would be waiting for them, and they now have to grapple with how to best handle or mishandle the bust. The temptation would be to say writer/director Carnahan has brought this story into the modern day based on the clothing and technology in this film, ostensibly set in the Miami-Dade County city of Hialeah, but Carnahan’s movie exists outside of time and space. It is an extended Twilight Zone bottle episode emptied of pedestrians or other cars on the road or non-shady cops or neighbors not affiliated with cartels, but this sustained single location on a barren planet casts a spell you’re unlikely to bump on. 

The Rip continually plays with your expectations and allegiances by leaning into and away from its casting, exploiting your affection for its overqualified players, none more so than Affleck and Damon. They allow the city miles to show on their worn faces just above feral beards. Both Byrne and Dumars have personal tragedies in their recent pasts, and they alternate bouncing off and bonding with each other throughout the film, even while occasionally pointing guns at one another’s heads. In these moments, you're struck by how much you’d like to see them lower their weapons, set aside their differences, and retire to a bar in Southie to shoot the shit. 

But there’s also Steven Yuen, Kyle Chandler (in a role that would’ve been tailormade for Carnahan’s great muse, Ray Liotta), Scott Adkins—used as an inside gag, playing an obnoxious Fed kept largely on the sidelines—and a perfectly timed support from Teyana Taylor, auditioning for a role as a bad guy in the next Fast & Furious spin-off so she can pay bills with between Oscar bids. Carnahan’s lean script employs intrigue expertly, dropping breadcrumbs of interpersonal history and motive and letting the viewer’s imagination do the work of connecting dots and spinning theories. Everyone has an agenda, and everyone is a suspect, as you try to figure out who is a double agent and how many of them are in the room with the cash. Carnahan has good taste in pulp and is an expert at selling knock-off Swiss watches on Canal Street, and this is a taut, pressure-cooked B-movie mofongo with dashes of The Thing, The Departed, Triple Frontier, and House of Games in its blood.

The runtime flies, and in what feels like no time, the suspense breaks, cards are laid out, and a Tahoe is battering up against an armored Lenco while cops suplex each other over a duffel bag of money in a swamp, but the resolution is never in question. As the credits roll, walk to the freezer, grab a pint of processed-ingredient-rich, full-fat, mass-produced ice cream, crack the lid, and get a rotation going with your kids and a spoon. You’ll be chasing yet another Affleck and Damon joint—one of life’s great treats—with another.