📺 Director Joe Carnahan returns to his gritty cop-thriller roots with The Rip, a taut Miami-set crime drama that rides almost entirely on the chemistry between its two leads — a gamble that pays off handsomely considering those leads are Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. The film follows world-weary Miami narcotics officers Lt. Dane Dumars (Damon) and Det. Sgt. JD Byrne (Affleck), members of a tactical unit that “rips” cartel stash houses.

When Captain Jackie Velez is murdered in the film’s prologue, suspicion falls on members of her own team. The investigation leads Dane’s unit to an unassuming house housing USD 20 mn, and suddenly everyone becomes a potential suspect.

Trust, or the corrosion of it, is the engine that drives the film. It’s the kind of movie where you’re constantly questioning who’s dirty, who’s clean, or if everyone exists somewhere along the spectrum. Carnahan traps his characters in a single location and watches them turn on each other as the hours tick by and outside threats close in. The constant flow of suspicion gives the film remarkable momentum.

The real draw is Damon and Affleck. Their long friendship and creative collaboration adds history to their onscreen rapport throughout the 112-minute runtime. But the stellar supporting cast also get their moments to shine, particularly Oscar-nominees Steven Teun and Catalina Sandino Moreno, along with recent Golden Globe recipient Teyana Taylor. Sasha Calle makes a strong impression as Desi, a young woman caught in the middle of the operation.

Where the film stumbles is in its third act. The plot is tight and fast-paced throughout, but the final scenes tying things up could have been cut in half without losing a beat.

But the larger issue may be one of timing and framing. Considering the ICE raids headlining major news outlets worldwide after the killing of Renee Good and law enforcement accountability being under intense scrutiny, The Rip asks audiences to root for cops debating whether to steal drug money. The moral grey zone Carnahan so carefully constructed feels less like nuanced storytelling and more like copaganda from a less fraught era. The film isn’t blind to corruption, but it treats it as a plot device rather than a systemic crisis.

Still, it’s the Mattfleck star power and Carnahan’s indisputable action bonafides that sell this cop thriller when formula threatens to overtake it. The Rip may not reinvent the genre, but it delivers exactly what it promises: a muscular, twisty throwback to the kind of mid-budget adult thriller that rarely gets made anymore. Whether audiences have the appetite for it right now is another question entirely.

WHERE TO WATCH- The Rip is streaming on Netflix. You can find the trailer on YouTube (runtime: 2:27).

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