Film Reviews

January 16, 2025

"The Rip" is another one of those "corrupt cop" movies that doesn't think the audience is very bright or demanding. The idea that it's "inspired by true events" also doesn't hold much weight because the movie clearly takes a lot of creative liberties, although they're unfortunately not very creative. Eventually, it spoon-feeds viewers as it goes down an increasingly silly and implausible road before settling on a patronizing and manipulative ending. To its credit, the production values are slick and the acting is strong, but these qualities simply dress up a mostly uninspired genre picture.

The movie's big sell is that it stars Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, the inextricably linked Hollywood friends made famous by their Oscar-winning collaboration on "Good Will Hunting" and then several films after that. Indeed, the Damon-Affleck combination is the main reason to see "The Rip" because the two seasoned actors infuse it with more gravitas than the movie probably deserves. It's too bad that the screenplay by director Joe Carnahan and co-writer Michael McGrale doesn't have the same conviction as the performances, most of which are quite good.

Damon plays Lieutenant Dane Dumars who, alongside Affleck's Detective Sergeant J.D. Byrne, is part of Miami's Tactical Narcotics Team, or TNT. The two have just learned of the murder of their Captain, Jackie Velez (Lina Esco), whose execution by two masked individuals opens the picture. Just before Velez is shot in the head, she texts Dumars the address of a house containing upwards of $20 million in drug money, although neither Dumars, Byrne, nor the rest of the TNT crew—Ro (Steven Yeun); Baptiste (Teyana Taylor); and Salazar (Catalina Sandino Moreno)–know the full sum. In fact, all Dumars knows is that there is some sizable amount of cash in the house, but he lets on that he received an anonymous tip about it, telling each crew member the stash is a different figure. Why he does this, I cannot reveal without giving away spoilers.

What I can say is that after the TNT forces its way into the house, which is being occupied by a single young woman named Desiree (Sasha Calle), who recently inherited the heavily hoarded residence from her late grandmother, each member experiences a moral crisis when he or she considers taking some of the money, even if it's just a little off the top. "This could solve so many of my problems," Salazar laments. Soon, paranoia, suspicion, and tension begin to rise, and everyone begins to suspect everyone else may be dirty, or at least susceptible to caving into shady temptation.

The biggest conflict is between Dumars and Byrne, not least because Dumars, whose own marriage is in shambles, learns that Byrne was in a relationship with Velez. Perhaps Dumars is jealous, and meanwhile, Byrne can't help but wonder why his superior lieutenant hasn't informed headquarters about the stakes of the current raid. What is Dumars hiding? As a safety measure, Byrne gives a play-by-play update to DEA Agent Matty Nix (Kyle Chandler), who is en route.

Now I would like to tell you that with this cast, this director (see Carnahan's great "The Grey" with Liam Neeson), and this budget, "The Rip" amounts to more than a routine crime drama and action movie with lots of macho talk, stare downs, gun battles, and improbable chase sequences, but the movie is comfortable with being ordinary and not especially interested in venturing down narrative roads not already taken by others of its kind, including "Copland," "The Negotiator," and "S.W.A.T."

What would have been more interesting than the plot centering around the sniffing out of a crooked cop would have been an exploration of the cartel neighborhood where the stash house is located and its innerworkings. We meet one cartel leader (well played by Sal Lopez) with whom Dumars and Byrne have a respectful exchange, despite being on different sides of the law, and it prompted me to wonder, do "ghost neighborhoods" like the one in the movie really exist? Is it common knowledge that there are designated drug money houses around hot-spot places such as Miami, cities where police know they can't possibly raid all the houses belonging to drug lords and kingpins? Is there a secret agreement between the authorities and the cartels that allows drug operations to at least take place peacefully, since they're inevitable anyway? This seems like an untapped topic that would have been worth exploring more in-depth.

Alas, "The Rip" sticks to its standard trajectory. Although, to be fair, we do get the sense the filmmakers and cast thought they were breathing new life into old material, and that, at the end of the day, they were simply giving the audience what they wanted to see, which is easy, digestible viewing. But easy viewing doesn't necessarily have to be predictable viewing, and "The Rip" starts to lose momentum and sputter out about halfway through once we realize who's good, who's bad, and that we can pretty much bet on how the climax will play out, which robs the movie of any remaining excitement or suspense.

One of the movie's biggest blunders occurs when the characters give a long and patronizing explanation of how they uncoiled the plot from point A to point B. This moment practically brings the narrative to a screeching halt as we endure not only dialogue but also flashbacks of how the last 90 minutes went down. Surely filmmakers as gifted as Carnahan know that if he feels the need to both show and tell the audience something, it means either the material isn't all that strong or the storytellers didn't have much faith in the audience to piece things together themselves using both audio and visual aids. Either way, it's a letdown, and it undermines what came before it, which was already pretty typical "cop movie" stuff.

It's a shame "The Rip" didn't have more ambition to stand out in its already crowded field and really lean into the intelligence we know its makers and cast possess. If it had, we might have gotten a movie where the wit and substance were just as strong as the production values (cinematographer Juanmi Azpiroz is particularly noteworthy for his striking use of light and shadows). The movie would have benefited from showing us its world from a different, more specialized angle, and then found a less arbitrary means of bringing all its plot threads together, ideally one that was tighter, less predictable, and more grounded, in which all the pieces didn't conveniently fit. All throughout "The Rip," we recognize it has the ingredients to be a solidly entertaining movie, but it ultimately settles on being mediocre one.