The Rip
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck star in a hard-hitting, generic cop thriller inspired by real events.
Serious money: Ben Affleck and Matt Damon
Image courtesy of Netflix.
by JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
A glossary of Miami police jargon might help. In this instance, a ‘rip’ is a ‘robbery in progress’, which officers of the Miami-Dade Police Department’s narcotics unit are hoping to intercept. However, if you’re a member of the NYPD, a ‘rip’ is a ‘reduction in pay,’ enforced when an officer has been found guilty of a violation. You have to keep up. Here, The Rip opens with the statement, ‘Inspired by True Events,’ and director Joe Carnahan – who also wrote the script – is at pains to give his thriller as authentic a feel as possible. His dialogue is the thing, ripping any sign of cliché out by the roots, dressing his procedural with a testosteronal odour you can smell all the way from the locker room. Asked how he’s feeling, Matt Damon’s recently promoted Lieutenant Dane Dumars mutters, “trying to find a fuck to give.” He and Detective Sergeant J.D. Byrne (Ben Affleck) have recently lost a colleague and close friend, Captain Jackie Velez (Lina Esco), in a covert nocturnal shooting. She was one of the good guys, and even as she lay dying, she managed to send a crucial text message that is to prove vital to Dane and J.D.’s next mission.
Dane Dumars is sent wind of a major stash of money secreted at a suburban house in the city of Hialeah, Florida. Bringing along four of his closest, J.D., Mike Ro (Steven Yeun), Numa Baptiste (Teyana Taylor), Lolo Salazar (Catalina Sandino Moreno), and a preternaturally gifted beagle called Wilbur, Dumars has to talk his way on to the premises without a search warrant. As it happens, the house only has one occupant, Desiree Molina (Sasha Calle), who is waiting for her grandmother’s probate to come through. She seems innocent, and resentful of the police, although the Colombian flag hanging outside her house acts as a red flag. Indeed, Wilbur smells a rat and thanks to him, the officers discover a stash of cash so large that it sets their hair follicles on end. This is serious money, not just the $150k that Jackie Velez alerted Dumars of. It’s such a big sum that even the Colombian cartel might want to make a wide berth…
To modest eyes, the events of The Rip seem so far-fetched that it’s hard to believe what’s on screen, even if this thing was inspired by real events. Yet it’s hard to believe the American headlines of late and with so many layers of law enforcement throttling the breath out of day-to-life in Miami, one might just go with it. Joe Carnahan, a veteran of this kind of material, does not kowtow to the lowest common denominator and brings a rich verbal discourse to what is actually quite a static stage, set over one bloody night. As usual, Damon and Affleck make a comfortable double-act, riffing off each other with well-established machismo. The details of the plot are not always easy to follow, both because much of the dialogue is impenetrable and because Carnahan cuts between scenes in an urge to push the action forward. But he does engender some suspense, until the generic wheels of the Netflix action-thriller click into gear and the pyrotechnics department takes over.
Cast: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Steven Yeun, Teyana Taylor, Sasha Calle, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Scott Adkins, Kyle Chandler, Néstor Carbonell, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Lina Esco, Daisuke Tsuji, Wilbur the Dog.
Dir Joe Carnahan, Pro Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Dani Bernfeld and Luciana Damon, Screenplay Joe Carnahan, Ph Juan Miguel Azpiroz, Pro Des Judy Becker, Ed Kevin Hale, Music Clinton Shorter, Costumes Kelli Jones.
Artists Equity-Netflix.
112 mins. USA. 2026. UK and US Rel: 16 January 2026. Cert. 15.
