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Ben Affleck and Matt Damon famously worked together in Good Will Hunting, which won them an Oscar.
Now they share the screen in The Rip, which is similar to the pulpy mid-budget cop movies we used to get in theaters but now is being released directly to Netflix.
The Rip is about a team of cops who are trying to take a huge stash of money from a drug cartel.
But that work is not only dangerous but also complicated.
A huge pile of illicit cash can lead to temptation and deep distrust, because the presence of even one dirty cop can ruin everything.
I'm Stephen Thompson, and today we are talking about The Rip on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.
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Joining me today is Jordan Cruciola.
She's a writer and producer and the host of the podcast Feeling Scene on Maximum Fun.
Hey, Jordan.
Hello.
Happy to be here with you.
Thank you.
A pleasure to have you.
Also with us is Vulture TV critic Roxanna Haddadi.
Hey, Roxanna.
Hello.
Thank you for having me.
Oh, it is always a pleasure.
In the opening moments of The Rip, a police team's captain is murdered.
Soon thereafter, they act on a tip about a stash of drug money outside Miami.
They assemble a team, including a money-sniffing dog, to confiscate it.
That team includes not only the cops played by Affleck and Damon, but also ones played by Steven Yeun, Tiana Taylor and Catalina Sandino Moreno.
As they encounter more money than they expected, the case grows increasingly complicated.
How much was the tip that came in?
It said 300 grand.
The Crimestopper tip that just got called in said 300?
300, 300.
Soon.
Various stakeholders local cops, the DEA, other feds cartel bosses and the homeowner whose property contains the money all make their presence felt.
But there's also increasing paranoia and distrust from within the team's ranks.
The Rip is streaming on Netflix now.
Jordan Cruciola, I'm going to start with you.
What did you think of The Rip?
I had a great time.
This is like a box checky kind of movie.
Like this is cops.
Is this dirty cops?
This is a stash house.
It's even Miami.
It's Florida crime.
And like the ensemble you mentioned, in addition, there's Kyle Chandler is here.
You love to see Kyle Chandler in a uniform of any kind, I feel.
Of any kind.
Of any kind.
I'm so into Dirtbag Damon.
I'm thinking of, like Matt Damon, getting these like surprising, incredibly like satisfying meal turns.
Like I'm thinking of him in The Last Duel, playing one of the roles of his life.
I'm thinking of him in this.
I'm so into Dirtbag Affleck blue collar in this movie as the bilingual angry cop whose brother is Scott Adkins and like an internal affairs investigator in this movie and honestly it functioned very effectively.
For me is a haunted house movie at points.
This has haunted house at the end of an empty street, kind of like a misty evening.
I was fully wrapped up in the suspense of this.
I was having a blast with the cast, and I was having a blast with the gunfights.
This is blue-collar entertainment as our characters are portrayed on screen, and I think it's a great little Friday night multi-bag of popcorn kind of movie.
Okay, like Miami Vice, but really grubby.
Grubby, grubby.
And God, you know, what a great example of the movies that come out in an Oscar campaign's year.
You have like Amanda Seyfried, Testament of Anne Lee, but then she's making The Housemaid.
You have Tiana Taylor getting her awards for one battle after another.
And in the meantime, she's in that Ryan Murphy show and this.
Like the things adjacent to an Oscar campaign, a great like Hollywood anthropological study.
All right, so Jordan, you are pro.
Pro, yes.
Stream it with a big bag of popcorn.
Yeah, I was with my family in Oregon this past weekend.
I was like, you know what movie you're gonna love that's coming up this week?
And they are.
They're gonna love it.
They're gonna love it.
My mom, my dad, they're gonna love it.
All right, how about you, Roxanna?
You know, Jordan and I are often on similar episodes because our tastes usually overlap.
Mm-hmm. and I adore her but also sometimes I say this thing on an episode with Jordan where I say I'm so happy you had a nice time yes and that's what I will say here I'm so happy that Jordan had a nice time As a student of Heat, specifically as you are, I've been really wondering what your reaction was going to be to this movie.
Yes.
I'm not sure we watched the same movie because I personally felt like the suspense was not suspensing.
But I think that there are elements here that I really liked.
As Jordan said, the final like 20 to 25 minutes are just like a heat ripoff, which you know.
So many movies have done this.
It's heat.
Like I get it.
Yeah.
I just did not feel invested in these characters in a way that made the twists and turns of the plot that interesting.
But I will say that I think visually it does some things that are really spectacular.
There is a shootout that is just awash in, like these neon Lisa Frank colors that I think are really interesting and unexpected.
It's like this movie opens with the Miami skyline and all the neon colors there, and then all of those colors show up in this gunfight, which is really interesting.
And I co-sign Jordan that I really adore Ben Affleck in this mode.
I have to say that he is introduced wearing a track jacket, a gold chain necklace, smoking a cigarette and wearing a double gun like shoulder holster.
This man so badly wishes that he were in eastern promises.
So like there are a lot of elements that feel really fun, i just don't think it coalesces into something that i had fun with Interesting.
I think I'm a little closer ultimately to team Jordan.
I think that this felt like a throwback to an era of somewhat.
It's not that there are no stakes in the movie obviously, but as a viewer the stakes feel lower.
This feels like solid kind of B grade basic cable.
Saturday afternoon kind of gritty pulpy, two hours fly by.
Two hours, 30 minutes of commercials on TNT.
See, I'm just shaking my head because I think it took me three hours to watch this 111-minute movie.
Oh, my God.
No, I was flying.
I was flying through this.
I flied.
And I have my attention has been known to wane, so i think part of it is.
I think damon and affleck, whatever they're in together.
They've been in several movies together now, including the last duel.
I'm not sure how the last duel keeps getting compared to this movie.
They're very different because it's a great movie.
The comparisons they stop at a certain point.
Please do not mistake me.
But like, if you're thinking of like These actors serving off of each other yes, you can.
That's where I'm trying to get at here, is these two guys have chemistry.
They've always had chemistry.
They're lifelong friends.
And that really, I think, comes through here.
Whether they are, you know, kind of working in agreement with each other or in opposition to each other, they have chemistry.
And I think that is part of what kind of propels this movie forward.
It has, I mean, as you said, Jordan, there is a kind of haunted house quality to this movie.
The whole detail with the street that they're on, I was like, oh, this is cool.
It gives you a real sense of place and it gives you a real sense of what the stakes are.
It does a fair bit of kind of underlining.
As twisty as it is, it doesn't get hopelessly Byzantine.
You probably kind of figure out the gist of where it's going.
It is not a wildly unpredictable movie, but to me i felt like this was the sort of kind of basic cable mid-grade, two to three star you know, just like fun saturday afternoon bucket of popcorn kind of movie.
And i think if netflix wants to kind of position itself as the new basic cable which it basically yeah, You're right.
They need to admit it.
It's so true.
You know that I'm here for it.
And I think this film held my attention in ways I didn't necessarily expect it to.
Roxanna, were you feeling, before it gets into like the knot of the mystery, in ways that you might have preferred different decision?
Were you feeling even at the outset, say even first half?
Were you not like the teeth were not getting in the movie for you?
Yeah, I think that's exactly right.
I think that Damon and Affleck together are always solid.
They're doing their like prickly banter.
They seem to be having like two different conversations at once.
I think all of that is really solid.
And I think to like Stephen's point, that is what kept me invested in the first place.
But I do think that, talking about the like basic cable of it all, we recently and by recently I mean last month, but I have no concept of time
We were talking about The Housemaid, which also feels like a throwback genre movie that that would live on television on Saturday afternoons.
The weird VH1 edit where it's like, why is this supposed to be sexy?
But the sexy's gone.
Right.
And we were sort of praising the like vintage genre shape of that.
But what worked so well for me with Housemaid is that there is this like bonkers third act twist that felt like it was taking an established formula and doing something new with it.
And I think for me, the rip just felt like established formula.
And I did not feel like it was doing something particularly new or interesting.
I will say the fact that there isn't a real third act twist.
I kept waiting for it.
Like I thought there would be like a post-credits scene.
That you know yanked me in a new direction, but it didn't.
So I think I was just a little bit let down by frankly, how generic it felt outside of the visuals and outside the fact that it is Affleck and Damon.
I just was sort of underwhelmed.
Yeah, I wouldn't even disagree with that.
It plays through in the way that you were describing.
And for me, that was effective.
And I can see why for you it wasn't.
I mean, I think it's interesting.
This film was written and directed by Joe Carnahan, who has worked on movies like The Grey.
Yeah, this is important information.
This is a Joe Carnahan movie for sure.
He directed Narc.
These movies are not necessarily intended to be massively artful and twisty.
But I think what you get here is a kind of journeyman filmmaking that hides the level of skill involved.
Because the fact that this film and Roxanna and I, our mileage really varied here.
I found it to be on rails in a way that made it go faster.
Interesting.
The unstoppable train was rolling for me.
Yeah.
Instead of on rails where it's like boring and predictable, it's on rails where it's kind of zipping along.
How did you feel about the ensemble, Roxanna?
How did you feel like they were clicking together?
What did you think of our cops?
I thought that Tiana Taylor was great sort of.
To the earlier point of like what are the different ensemble members bringing?
I really liked her energy.
I thought that she was adding like a levity and sort of like a no-nonsense this is just our jobs dynamic.
That I really enjoyed.
She had my back.
She looked bad to me.
And has her death in it.
No, no, no.
Let's not her death and let's her murder.
She was murdered.
Let's keep it real.
Let's keep it a bean.
I really enjoyed Kyle Chandler.
I think that he is in like a very fun spot in his career where he is just like showing up being the authoritarian guy with a little bit of like a wink, you know.
Like it made me think of his performance in Game Night.
Uh-huh.
I'm D.A.
Burns.
That makes me Miami's finest.
Ask your crooked cops you socializers.
What really disappointed me is I was like, we have Scott Adkins and he's not Scott Adkins-ing.
Like, he's such an action star.
Speaking of things you're waiting for, guys, I am going to pop the bubble.
If you're like, oh, it's Scott Adkins.
He's going to do a butterfly spinning kick through the air.
No, he's not.
At no point.
I think this goes back to something Stephen was saying, which is that I perhaps came in with expectations of like oh Scott Adkins.
So we're going to get an action sequence.
And then when we didn't get it, it was a disappointment for me.
But maybe those were my expectations rather than being fair to the film for what it was.
Stephen, am I like sort of on the right track here?
What do you think?
Yeah, I mean, I think the context in which you take in this film is extremely important.
And if you're coming into this film, I mean there are going to be people who would consider watching this film, who are like I don't want to watch a cop movie right now.
I agree.
And that is going to affect whether you enjoy this film or not.
I think that was part of it, yeah.
There are going to be people who are like, I'm sick of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.
They're probably not going to enjoy this movie very much.
But if you go into it, you want a kind of...
As we have said repeatedly, basic cable, throwback, cop movie that will entertain you for two hours.
For me, this fits the brief.
And so I think, if you go into it with your expectations set accordingly, you're not spending night out at the movies money.
It's included in the price you've already paid.
Exactly.
And like that does come into play.
There are movies that really work on streaming that do not work in theaters and kind of vice versa.
And to me the fact that Netflix kind of acquired this film and released it the way that they did works in its favor as a viewing experience.
Oh, God, I know.
But I was watching it thinking of like, why are we getting 10 of these movies a year?
Yeah, I think there are two things that I want to say about that.
One, you know, sort of we talked about like theatrical versus streaming.
Where does this movie live?
Cable, where does this movie live?
I feel like what it really is for me is when you would go to like Wegmans and there was a red box outside.
And you saw all of these action movies that you had never heard of because they were maybe independently funded or maybe acquired and then, just sort of like, directly released to DVD.
Again, I think if that's an experience you can miss, this is sort of what that reminded me of.
Like looking at a bank of movies and being like I've never heard of any of these, but maybe they're fun.
And then the last thing that I think is interesting, we're talking about it being on Netflix.
It was newsworthy that Damon and Affleck said that their production company negotiated a deal with Netflix right.
Where, if the movie is a success on Netflix, the entire production will get like back-end bonuses, which Netflix has not done before.
And Affleck said that like the two sides agreed on certain metrics.
It's not clear what those metrics are.
Wait.
Wait, Netflix metrics are unclear?
Okay, wow.
My mind is blown.
Go ahead.
100%.
All I will say is setting aside whatever my feelings were about this movie.
I really do hope that it is successful because I think those back-end bonuses were like very key to when Hollywood had a middle class and like a crew who could work on these movies.
Exactly.
1000%.
Which is exactly how Affleck has framed it.
This used to be a profession where you could have a middle class life.
That was exactly the phrase I was going to end this conversation on was bring back the cinematic middle class.
I think we are missing out on a lot of great movies that way.
And just a lot of fun movies.
Yeah.
I think we can agree as widely as our opinions on this film vary.
At home on the couch with a big bucket of popcorn is probably the way to experience it.
We want to know what you think about The Rip.
Find us on Facebook at facebookcom slash pchh.
And on Letterboxd at letterboxdcom slash nprpopculture.
We'll have a link in our episode description.
That brings us to the end of our show.
Jordan Cruciola, Roxanna Haddadi, thanks so much for being here.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for having me.
This episode was produced by Liz Metzger, Kayla Lattimore, Mike Katzeff and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy.
Hello Come In provides our theme music.
Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.
I'm Stephen Thompson, and we will see you all next time.
