When Detective Sgt. J.D. Byrne (Ben Affleck) gives a call to a D.E.A. agent (Kyle Chandler) on the sly about his boss potentially going rogue, a game of clean cop, dirty cop is laid out in rote, practically flow chart, form: We’ve got a murdered captain and a stash of drug money; a dead son and a fractured marriage; a cartel in the shadows and a police squad looking at one another sideways.
Cue the thumping synths.
Tension is all about gesticulation and the drama is all in the explication: Welcome to the Netflixified version of “Training Day,” with a dash of “Bad Boys.”
Written and directed by Joe Carnahan, “The Rip” is, in other words, a movie that mostly tries to telegraph the idea of entertainment — you recognize the stars, you recognize the genre and the beats — rather than to actually entertain. In spurts it almost has you fooled — it’s hard to resist Affleck and Matt Damon joshing and jawing at each other as grizzled cops-in-arms.
The movie, you might say, has a built-in excuse for the stiffness in a scene like that one with the call: In a story where everybody is looking over their shoulders, anyone can be playing anyone, and it’s up to you to parse the performances. But really, that’s what you call a (dirty) cop-out for inert filmmaking.
Save for an opening flashback, everything takes place in one night, and almost all at this one Miami stash house where a police squad sledgehammers its way through drywall and finds a pyramid of orange tubs chock-full of dirty money. Immediately, Lt. Dane Dumars (Damon) begins to freak out; that much cash spells danger, particularly among a squad reeling from the recent unsolved murder of its former captain. Questions of where that money comes from and what the squad is going to do about it — report it or pocket it — begin to test loyalties, particularly between best buds Dane and J.D.
These are all the ingredients for a gritty cop drama about a spiderweb of paranoia, but it plays out as a work that started with a seemingly clever climax in mind, then jury-rigged itself backward to fill in the rest. The actual work of making its stakes felt in story structure, dialogue and direction is instead pawned off to its generically propulsive score, and to Affleck’s overcooked hotheadedness.
But again, the concept is immediately, perfunctorily legible, and that’s usually what anybody and their mother tune in to Netflix for on a Thursday night. But to do that to a cast like this — with Damon and Affleck, with Chandler, Steven Yeun and Teyana Taylor? These are heavy hitters who suddenly look like small potatoes in a subpar popcorn shootout movie.
Damon is the only one keeping his head above water, mostly because he’s the only one given the space to make decisions and navigate different dynamics. Everyone else is trapped in a kiddie game of cops and robbers.
The Rip Rated R for violence and pervasive language. Running time: 2 hours 13 minutes. Watch on Netflix.
The post ‘The Rip’ Review: Clean Cop, Dirty Cop appeared first on New York Times.
