By Marc Butterfield
“Are we the good guys?” – Lieutenant Dane Dumars (Matt Damon)
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck have been friends since they were in elementary school, and now they’re bringing that friendship to Netflix. The duo are reteaming for the new crime thriller The Rip, from writer-director Joe Carnahan (Narc, Smokin’ Aces, Copshop, Boss Level). Also coming along for the ride are Steven Yeun, Kyle Chandler, Teyana Taylor, Catalina Sandino Moreno, and Sasha Calle; the film is produced by Artists Equity, the studio-led studio that Damon and Affleck founded in 2022.
If you think you’re going to walk in and figure this one out while watching, I must say, you probably aren’t. The story has more twists and turns than a Monaco race track, and you catch on pretty quick that nothing is as it seems. The pacing is smooth, the dialogue is tight and economical, the action does NOT disappoint either. It may be a Netflix movie, but it really could have killed at the box office. I like Carnahan’s movies, and this is amongst his best. The chemistry with Affleck and Damon has not diminished with time, and the supporting cast all pull their weight with them. It’s definitely the edge-of-your seat action one wants from a crime drama, and the settings all feel like they could stand up to much bigger budget movies.
Beware: spoilers ahead, so if you don’t want to know too much, save the below for later.
THE RIP follows Damon – Lieutenant Dane Dumars – and Affleck – Detective Sergeant J.D. Byrne – as Miami cop partners who find themselves in a sticky situation after their team finds $24 million stashed away in a safehouse. Required by law to count the money before leaving the scene, the cops and their team must survive the night — and each other. Plus the team is already on edge — and under FBI investigation — after the murder of their captain, Jackie Velez (Lina Esco).
And they find the police informant in the house, Dumars and Byrne’s first instinct is soon proven correct: The money is from the cartel.
Desi (Sasha Calle), the home’s owner, is an unwitting pawn in the organization’s game. The cartel paid Desi to place buckets of cash in the attic of her new home, inherited from her recently deceased grandmother. With plenty of funeral and medical expenses to pay, it was an offer the young woman couldn’t refuse. Partner turns on partner, bullets start flying, and the cartel is on the prowl. When threatening phone calls start coming through and the house is hit with a barrage of bullets, the team naturally blames the cartel. But a nighttime chase quickly resolves that question. Byrne finds common cause with the cartel lookout who was communicating through the porch light. He even helps him run off the real culprits and coordinates a phone conversation with his cartel chief (Sal Lopez), who convinces Byrne and Dumars that the cartel didn’t fire a shot.
“The Rip came out of a deeply personal experience that my friend went through, both as a father and as head of tactical narcotics for the Miami Dade police department,” Carnahan explains. “It’s inspired in part by his life and then, by my enduring love for those classic ‘70’s cop thrillers that really valued the character and interpersonal relationships and became touchstones of that era — films like Serpico and Prince of The City and more recently, Michael Mann’s Heat.”
The viewer will discover that there are details in the movie drawn directly from officer Chris Casiano’s true story that inspired the film. The final piece of tension emerges from a procedural detail: will the rip’s final total match the count performed by the Tactical Narcotics Team? It does, to the dime: $20,650,480.
Dumars says goodbye to Desi, and reveals the truth behind his tattoos. They’re not a somber reminder of his duty, necessarily. They’re a memorial to his son. “Are we the good guys?” was the last thing his son said to him; “We are and always will be” was the last thing he said to his son.
Shot masterfully by cinematographer Juanmi Azpiroz, the film is filled with gunfights, car chases, and rooftop shootouts. This is The Rip. You won’t want to miss it.
Watch on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81915745
4 out of 4 stars
