'The Rip' review: Action-packed thriller highlights Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's chemistry

WHAT IT'S ABOUT  Nearly 30 years after "Good Will Hunting," Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are still making movies together. "The Rip," their new Netflix film, stands as another testament to this unshakable bond, one that famously began in their Cambridge, Massachusetts, childhood and continues today at the top of a business so often shaped by out-of-control egos, ceaseless ambition and the destruction of even the most solid relationships.

The action picture arrives courtesy of their Artists Equity production company and writer-director Joe Carnahan ("The Grey"). Damon and Affleck play Miami cops Dane Dumars and J.D. Byrne, leaders on the Tactical Narcotics Team.

As the picture opens, their captain has been murdered, the unit's being investigated for potential crooked dealings, and Dumars receives a tip about a stash house in the city of Hialeah. He gets the team together for the bust — a team that also includes characters played by the "One Battle After Another" star Teyana Taylor, the great actor Steven Yuen ("Beef") and the Oscar nominee Catalina Sandino Moreno ("Maria Full of Grace").

MY SAY This is the sort of movie in which actors swagger around as tough cops, bellowing out police jargon, waving their guns around, and barking out orders, before eventually turning on each other. 

Dane and J.D. are the haggard, gruff veterans who've seen it all but still manage to be shocked by what they find at the stash house, when an expected six-figure bust instead reveals more than $20 million in cartel cash.

It's a genre picture made with ruthless efficiency. Carnahan has spent most of his career working in this space and it shows. He knows how to generate tension with a modicum of time-wasting exposition. The screenplay confines a large percentage of the action to the stash house, crescendoing toward conflict as the cartel or some other mysterious antagonist appears to be closing in, while the cops recognize they can't trust their team members.

Damon and Affleck relish going at each other, including in what appears to be their first on-screen fight. They're surrounded by consummate professionals who instantly make all of this seem far more gritty and convincing than it probably had a right to seem. The co-stars also include the dependable veteran Kyle Chandler and the excellent Sasha Calle (Supergirl in "The Flash" movie from 2023), who steals scenes as the woman living in the stash house.

While the picture makes something of the nighttime Miami cityscape, when the action emerges from the Hialeah home, it isn't a "Miami Vice" retread. Don't expect that sort of neon-drenched, neo-noir aesthetic. This is not an existential rumination on what it means to do this for a living. 

"The Rip" is exactly what it seems to be, no more and no less. It's not going to be the movie people first remember when they look back on the Damon-Affleck partnership, but it's a worthy new chapter. And that's enough.

BOTTOM LINE Affleck and Damon have a good time and so will you.