For the first time in their long history together, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are costarring in a Netflix original movie.
The Rip is the new No. 1 film on Netflix, and it’s no low-budget flick. This crime thriller cost around $100 million, and it’s worthy to watch in any movie theater.
But if you’re wondering if The Rip is worth watching on Netflix, we’ve got the answer.
Here are Watch With Us‘ three reasons to watch The Rip this month.
Fans Gush Over Matt Damon and Ben Affleck Reuniting in ‘The Rip’ Trailer
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon Bring Out the Best in Each Other
Considering that we’ve seen Affleck and Damon on-screen more than a few times since Good Will Hunting in 1997, it doesn’t take much convincing to make the audience believe that Lieutenant Dane Dumars (Damon) and Detective Sergeant JD Byrne (Affleck) are close friends. The hard part for this film is to show that friendship can crack under a tremendous strain. Dane received a promotion over JD, and now the former is acting very suspiciously about a “rip,” or a life-changing amount of money hidden in a stash house.
Dane refuses to answer questions about his tip, and he’s not forthcoming when JD and the other officers ask him why he isn’t following protocol. Tensions boil over, and there is even a fistfight between JD and Dane over the issue. Both Damon and Affleck make this seem like the natural progression, given the money at stake. Their conflict also makes the audience wonder if Dane is really as corrupt as he appears, or if we’ve been judging the wrong cop. Damon and Affleck play off each other very well, and that works wonders for this film.
The Supporting Cast Is Compelling
Beef and The Walking Dead star Steven Yeun leads the supporting cast as Detective Mike Ro, who becomes increasingly worried by the conduct of Dane and JD. For a good portion of the film, Mike is the audience’s surrogate character who asks the important questions and recoils in horror at the things he sees and hears. Sasha Calle is also effective as Desiree “Desi” Molina, a young woman whose home is turned upside down in the hunt for the cash. Calle pulls off a balancing act of knowing more than she says and less than she thinks about the cops tearing up her house.
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Teyana Taylor and Catalina Sandino Moreno don’t get as much to do as Detectives Numa Baptiste and Lolo Salazar, respectively. Their characters seem genuinely tempted by the money, but they spend more time counting it than anything else. Out of the remaining supporting cast members, Kyle Chandler has a strong turn as DEA Agent Mateo “Matty” Nix. He’s a friend to both Dane and JD, and neither of them knows which one he’s going to side with over the cash.
‘The Rip’ Successfully Builds Suspense About Who Can Be Trusted
On second viewing, if you know what you’re looking for, you’ll see that the clues were laid out during the entire movie. The real plan and the entire reason why so much of this illegal money was up for grabs. So if you’re going into the film without any foreknowledge, you could figure out what’s happening if you pay very close attention to everything.
But if you don’t know what’s happening, The Rip does an excellent job of building suspense as the team faces internal strife and external threats from someone willing to kill for the money they’ve found. Without giving anything away, there are some big action sequences in the third act that ramp up the excitement. But it’s the intensity of the characters and their mutual distrust inside the stash house that makes this thriller a must-watch movie.
The Rip is streaming on Netflix.
