The boys are back in town in “The Rip,” Joe Carnahan’s grim, gloomy Netflix crime thriller that reunites everyone’s favorite Hollywood BFFs, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Damon and Affleck broke into the biz together and struck it big with “Good Will Hunting” before going off in (mostly) separate directions. They recently reunited for Ridley Scott’s excellent, underrated “The Last Duel,” but that film kept their characters apart for the majority of the run time. “The Rip,” in contrast, is being sold as the big Damon/Affleck reunion we’ve been waiting for. What could be better than watching these two guys being dudes?
Unfortunately, while there’s some fun here and there (Affleck is particularly amusing playing a chain-smoking, world-class a-hole), “The Rip” has an unfortunate “been there, done that” quality to it. We’ve seen this type of cop thriller before — and done better. Maybe if Carnahan, who also penned the script, had added a bit more levity to the proceedings, “The Rip” would function better. Instead, everyone is so miserable, so dour, so bitter that it becomes a bit of a chore to watch.
That’s not to say “The Rip” needed to be a wacky comedy. After all, Carnahan has more than a few bleak movies to his name — his breakout “Narc” is unrelenting in its misery, and I’m a big fan of his “The Grey,” a haunting meditation on death that was (unfortunately) marketed as a standard Liam Neeson action movie. But while Carnahan found the right balance to strike with those films, he doesn’t seem able to nail down “The Rip.”
The Rip has a good cast, but none of them have much to do
Set in a surprisingly dark and rainy Miami, “The Rip” introduces us to the TNT unit of the police force — a group of no-nonsense, rough-and-tumble shooters who take down big scores and boast even bigger clearance numbers. The unit finds themselves in a bit of a crisis: their leader, Jackie Velez (Lina Esco), is murdered in the opening scene of the film.
This opens the door for the morose Lieutenant Dane Dumars (Damon) to become the new boss, something that seems to sit perfectly fine with his supportive team consisting of Detective Sergeant JD Byrne (Affleck), Detective Mike Ro (Steven Yeun), Detective Numa Baptiste (“One Battle After Another” breakout Teyana Taylor), and Detective Lolo Salazar (Catalina Sandino Moreno). The cast assembled here is unquestionably talented, but they all appear adrift in the material. The one bright spot is Kyle Chandler, who oozes charisma as a DEA agent hanging out on the periphery of the story. There’s also a cute money-sniffing dog, so I guess that’s something.
The building blocks are all here for Carnahan to create a fun team dynamic, but we learn almost nothing about the bulk of these characters save for Affleck’s JD, who is a longtime buddy of Dane. Damon’s main character doesn’t fare much better; we’re told he’s grieving the death of his son and drowning in medical debt, but that’s about as much info as the film is willing to dish out. To be fair, Carnahan is playing things very close to the chest because he’s got more than a few twists and turns up his sleeve, but you’re bound to see them coming.
The Rip feels less like a movie and more like a pilot for a new cop show
As the sun begins to set, the team is ready to clock out for the day — until Dane tells them about a tip involving a stash house in Hialeah. They roll out and end up in an eerily quiet cul-de-sac, knocking on the door of a house inhabited by Desi (Sasha Calle, who is quite good here playing a character caught in the middle of the mayhem). The young woman explains the house once belonged to her now-dead grandmother and she’s tied up in probate court trying to make the place her own. The cops act friendly and courteous to Desi … at first. Eventually, though, an alarming amount of money is discovered stashed away in the attic. Desi claims she has no knowledge of it — but she also tells the cops that they should “take what they want” and leave. An ominous anonymous phone call to the house also offers a warning: if the cops don’t get out of there soon, they’re all going to die.
The stage is set for plenty of morally gray drama: will this team turn dirty and pocket the cash? Or is something else going on here? Dane begins acting strange, and JD notices this pretty quickly, leading the two friends to be at each other’s throats. From here, I assumed Carnahan was going to take an “Assault on Precinct 13”-style approach, with our cops under siege from criminals trying to bust into their location. But while “The Rip” stays pretty much rooted to that cul-de-sac, most of the film’s time is devoted to watching the characters stand around with sour looks on their faces and making abundant use of the f-word. There are bursts of action from time to time, but they fail to thrill. Not helping matters is the look of the film, which is so murky and dark that you’ll have a hard time seeing what’s happening on screen. To be fair, this is a problem that plagues many modern films and isn’t unique to “The Rip,” but I’d sure like it to stop.
“The Rip” does give us a handful of scenes where Damon and Affleck’s characters bro out, but these are brief flashes of light in a sea of darkness. I’m all for dark and gritty crime dramas, but “The Rip” never feels like much of a movie, more like a pilot for a new, particularly violent “Law & Order” spin-off. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are movie stars, why hire them for anything less?
/Film Rating: 5 out of 10
“The Rip” is streaming on Netflix starting January 16, 2026.
