Whenever I see the names of Matt Damon (The Martian) and Ben Affleck (Argo) together on a poster, my attention is captured by a nostalgia that goes back to their earliest successes. The dynamic between the two is one of the most solid pillars of contemporary cinema, and the prospect of seeing them share the screen again, under the banner of their own production company (Artists Equity), brought me considerable excitement. Add to this a stacked secondary cast featuring brilliant names like Steven Yeun (Minari), Teyana Taylor (A Thousand and One), and Kyle Chandler (Manchester by the Sea), and my expectations naturally skyrocketed.
I’ll admit that the fact that it’s a Netflix original production left me initially hesitant, fearing that generic aesthetic that sometimes haunts the platform’s movies. However, I went in hoping for a pleasant surprise, and to my satisfaction, that’s exactly what I got.
The Rip places us in the middle of a Miami police operation that quickly spirals out of control. Written and directed by Joe Carnahan (The Grey), the film follows a narcotics team that discovers an amount of cash absurdly higher than expected. What starts as a routine seizure turns into a claustrophobic standoff where everyone’s loyalty is put to the test in the face of a financial temptation capable of changing the course of any life.
My biggest surprise lies in Carnahan‘s approach. While the director has a track record of visceral action flicks, this project settles into the territory of mystery and psychological tension. The choice to set most of the plot in a single location is always a courageous artistic decision; as a fan of one-location filmmaking, I appreciate how this setting prevents filmmakers from hiding behind technical gimmicks, forcing them to focus entirely on the writing and the performances. The narrative focus doesn’t lie in incessant chases, but rather in the gradual disintegration of trust within the team.
The Rip functions as a real-time puzzle where one tries to decipher who’s truly trustworthy. This slower approach might be considered too uneventful for those looking for purely physical entertainment, but it’s that very introspection that captivated me. The exploration of the relationship between Damon‘s and Affleck‘s characters is the beating heart of the movie. You can feel the weight of decades of real and cinematic friendship, which makes every suspicion and every look of distrust much more impactful for the viewer. It’s gratifying to see how the screenplay respects the history of these men without yielding to cheap sentimentality.
From a technical standpoint, The Rip is a very well-executed work, even if no single department particularly stands out. The script avoids the most generic paths of the genre, which is refreshing. Often, in these stories, characters make illogical decisions just to serve a shocking twist, but here, I felt a respect for everyone’s motivations, allowing the story to unfold in a way that’s coherent with the established personalities — especially regarding the central moral dilemma, which is resolved in a highly satisfying manner.
Not everything is perfect, though. While the central figures are explored with some detail, the same can’t be said for some members of the secondary cast. The characters played by Taylor and Catalina Sandino Moreno (Maria Full of Grace) suffer from a certain shallowness, functioning more as archetypes necessary for the story than as individuals with their own layers. It’s difficult to tell if an eventual choice makes sense when you know practically nothing about them. Additionally, a single sequence of greater visual impact in the second act could have helped elevate the entertainment levels, avoiding some rhythmic redundancies felt midway through the narrative.
Still, the virtues outweigh these minor issues. The Rip is an intriguing analysis of the power of corruption and how greed can crumble institutions. Inspired by a real story from a tactical narcotics officer, the narrative dives into the concept of the “point of no return.” Once the decision to keep the money or not is made, the characters stop fighting for a better life and start fighting for their own souls. The weight of choice and the inevitability of consequence hang over every scene like a heavy shadow, exploring the psychological toll of a single moral compromise.
Final Thoughts on The Rip
The Rip reveals itself to be an intriguing surprise that swaps easy pyrotechnics for psychological tension, leaning on the undeniable charisma of the Matt Damon and Ben Affleck duo and a steady direction by Joe Carnahan that values spatial containment. Despite a lack of deeper secondary character development, the film stands out for the honesty with which it treats its themes and its refusal to betray the logic of its protagonists in favor of mindless spectacle. It’s a raw portrait of the fragility of human bonds when faced with absolute temptation that doesn’t deserve to go unnoticed.
Rating: B
The Rip is now playing on Netflix.
Learn more about the film, including how to watch it, at the official website for the title.
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