@Courtesy of Netflix
About twenty years ago, thanks to the success of Narc and Smokin’ Aces, Joe Carnahan looked like the “next big thing” when it came to crime-movies. After that, with the exception of the highly underestimated The Grey, the screenwriter and director hasn’t been able to achieve anything truly remarkable. Or even worth remembering. Now the chance for a comeback with two A-level stars like Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, plus a solid supporting cast including Teyana Taylor, Steven Yeun, Catalina Sandino Moreno and one of the best character actors of our times, Kyle Chandler. Based loosely on true events, The Rip talks about a team of police officers discovering an incredible amount of drug money in an old house in Miami. What to do with all that cash? How far can a man go when split between his sense of duty and the chance to fix everything that doesn’t work in his life just stealing the loot no one will reclaim?
This new feature film by Carnahan starts with a pretty good scene, tense and well written, especially because it spares the viewer from useless words. Then just the opposite happens: The Rip becomes a crime-movie where every single character talks way too much, and when the story brings everyone inside the house where the money is hidden, for about an entire hour, no tension is truly developed by the situation the cops are in. Carnahan isn’t able to project into the environment the necessary sense of claustrophoby in order to make the audience feel that the protagonists are under siege. At the same time, you can’t really feel their internal struggle, the dilemma about the money, the suspicion that your partner and best friend could be the one who betrayed you in order to get the money. This way, The Rip becomes pretty soon a quite enjoyable exercise of style – there is at least a scene set in the foggy neighborhood that is visually intriguing – but absolutely nothing new, nothing that we haven’t already seen hundreds of times when it’s about “dirty cops”.
Of course you have Matt Damon who always delivers an effective performance and Ben Affleck who possesses the necessary stage presence, but it isn’t enough to make the whole operation work on a deeper level. Even worse, The Rip is that kind of movie that you could watch on TV sitting on your comfortable armchair, but that you wouldn’t most likely spend money to go to watch in a movie theater. Must be written though that the second part of The Rip is surely more interesting than the first one, and the last few minutes grant a slight sense of melancholy that finally gives the protagonists some depth.
@Courtesy of Netflix
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck have a long-time friendship and artistic partnership that brought to the audience at least a remarkable movie like Good Will Hunting by Gus Van Sant – for which they won an Academy Award for best original screenplay and – and a solid, entertaining biopic like Air, directed by Affleck himself. The Rip definitely doesn’t stand at the same level of these two feature films. Everything is in the right place in Joe Carnahan’s work, but the final result is so plain, without any sparkle of originality, that honestly adds nothing to this genre. Here and there there are some scenes where the director shows that he once possessed an interesting vision on this kind of stories, but it doesn’t last more than a few shots. Absolutely not enough to make The Rip something worth to be reminded of. You can watch it without wasting your time, but it won’t last that long in your cinematic memory…
Rate: C
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Here’s the trailer for The Rip: