RIOTUS

Ever since I heard about it, The Rip was instantly on my radar as a must-see movie, even with me having to see it only on my television. The Rip is the newest team-up film by best friend movie stars and producers Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. In this one, they play Lieutenant Dane Dumars and Detective Sergeant JD Byrne, respectively—two Miami police officers whose captain was murdered. After Captain Jackie Velez (Lina Esco) is killed and they don’t know who did it, everyone in her unit, including Dane and JD, is suspected of foul play. This air of mistrust throughout the whole unit once Dane sends them on a “Rip” to a random rundown house in Hialeah. Once they find over twenty million dollars in the attic, everything is up in the air as each member of the unit doesn’t know if they can trust each other and if this whole thing was a trap.

This movie bang y’all. I don’t care about any other person reviewing this film that might decry or call it mid. It’s not. My main issue with this film was that I had to watch it on my television instead of a big screen at the multiplex theater. Joe Carnahan wrote and directed this action crime thriller that has a clear influence of the great Michael Mann Heat but also stuff from his own work like screenwriting Bad Boys for Life and the soon to turn twenty year old Smokin’ Aces. While the film isn’t the most complicated mystery to figure out, seeing the characters work out who might or might not be dirty is handled well throughout the whole movie.

Damon and Affleck are both good here. They’re so comfortable together on screen that they always work for me. Here, Damon is the more subdued character, and Affleck is the more over-the-top one. The way these characters work is with Affleck’s obnoxious, machismo police sergeant, who makes you start questioning him from the first frame you see him. You just know he’s the dirty cop, and the quiet, reasonable lieutenant tugs on you to feel he’s the good guy, the hero. What this movie does well is make you question both of our leads throughout the film. The film isn’t that complex overall, but it does well to make you feel you might not know where this is going.

Steven Yeun plays Detective Mike Ro and also comes across as the young heroic officer, and plays off your ideas of what you’ve seen Yeun before in other projects. He gives a strong performance and does great work with Sasha Calle’s Desi, the young woman who lives in the house that was her grandmother’s. She gets caught up in all this as the person outside of the whole dynamic of this unit, and with being in their custody and this twenty million dollars, the film shrinks down to build this tension as someone will come for this money. It has elements of a horror movie or a film like Assault on Precinct 13. I bring this up as the film goes on, and you end up in the place of Desi and not trusting the police, she has some damsel elements until you can figure out which one of these cops can be trusted.

Teyana Taylor plays Detective Numa Baptiste and Catalina Sandino Moreno plays Detective Lolo Salazar round out the unit with relatable characters that don’t get to do a lot but add in some good character moments for the others to bounce off of when watching. Kyle Chandler plays DEA Agent Mateo ‘Matty’ Nix, and while he’s not in the film a lot, his presence is very much felt. Chandler with Damon and Affleck really takes this movie to the peak “dad movie” realm. All these likable guys you know and playing cops in this gray area in Miami with drug money and guns, it’s like catnip for the uncs and dads.

There is one standout part where we see Damon, Yeun, Taylor, and Moreno in the garage of the house with a station wagon pushed against the garage door. They are having a shoot-out – it’s dark and cramped, and most of the light in the scene is from the muzzle flashes and the light coming through the bullet holes from the bullets being shot into the garage. It’s chaoticly beautiful, and wonderfully shot, and that’s what makes these types of movies sing. It’s simple and complicated, familiar and new, and comforting to watch. The Rip is the type of movie I miss throughout the year, and it is a great movie to start the year on Netflix. The Rip is a must-watch for me.