When I first heard about The Rip, one of the things that caught my attention was seeing Matt Damon and Ben Affleck together again. Add a gritty police story to that and I honestly thought I was going to get a movie full of shooting, chasing and plenty of action but The Rip wasn't really that kind of movie..
The story starts when a Miami-Dade tactical narcotics team goes to a house in Hialeah expecting a normal drug bust. Instead, they find something much bigger.. about $20 million in cash hidden inside the house and from that moment, everything changes..
The team is already dealing with the recent murder of their former captain, so there is already a lot of tension between them... Then Lieutenant Dane Dumars, played by Matt Damon, starts acting strangely... He takes everyone's phones, locks down the house and doesn't immediately tell dispatch about the money. Instead, he insists that they stay there and count it.... This naturally makes everyone suspicious..
Ben Affleck plays J.D. Byrne, Dumars' longtime partner and I think this was one of the strongest parts of the movie for me.. He starts wondering whether his friend has gone bad whether he's trying to steal the money or whether he knows something about their captain's death...
From there, the movie becomes more about trust than action. I really enjoyed watching Damon and Affleck together because you can actually feel the history between their characters. There is a kind of friendship and loyalty there, but the money slowly starts destroying it.
Damon also does a good job playing someone who isn't completely trustworthy... I'm so used to seeing him play the good guy that watching him behave suspiciously made me question almost everything he was doing.... The movie also does a good job making the house feel uncomfortable and small... Most of the story happens in that one location, and after a while, you start feeling the tension along with the characters.. Everyone is suspicious of everyone, people are getting angry, and nobody really knows who they can trust.
However, I felt the supporting characters could have been used much better... There are some really good actors in the movie, including Steven Yeun, Teyana Taylor, Sasha Calle and Scott Adkins, but I honestly expected more from them. Most of the time, they just seemed to be standing around with guns and reacting to whatever Damon and Affleck were doing and if you're watching because you're a Scott Adkins fan and expecting plenty of fighting, don't get your hopes too high. This isn't really that type of movie.
I also think the ending was where the movie became a little messy as the first part and most of the middle were focused on the tension, the money and the question of who could be trusted but towards the end, there were so many twists and explanations coming at once that it started feeling a bit rushed...
For me, The Rip isn't a perfect movie and I wouldn't call it one of the best crime movies I've ever seen but I enjoyed it... It kept me interested, especially because I kept wondering what was actually going on and who was telling the truth..
Sometimes you don't need explosions every five minutes to make a crime movie interesting... Give a group of people $20 million, lock them in a house and make them question each other and you already have enough problems. So Overall, I'd say The Rip is worth watching, especially if you like crime movies that focus more on characters, trust and tension than constant action...
Rating: 80/100
