‘The Rip’ runs on greed, paranoia and misdirection

“The Rip”
R | 117 minutes
Director: Joe Carnahan
Writers: Joe Carnahan, Michael McGrale
Stars: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Steven Yeun

In the shadowy glow of Joe Carnahan’s “The Rip,” the most dangerous criminals are not the cartel operatives lurking off-screen but the badges meant to protect and serve. This Netflix thriller, “inspired by true events” within the Miami Police Department, is a masterfully constructed pressure cooker of paranoia, a film where loyalty is the first casualty when millions in unclaimed cash is up for grabs. With a stellar ensemble led by real-life besties Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, “The Rip” delivers a gripping, high-octane and character-driven experience that prioritizes who-done-it tension over explosive spectacle.

The film opens with a terrific, brutal sequence: the ambush and murder of respected Captain Jackie Velez (Lina Esco). With her final act, she sends a cryptic text about a “rip” — police slang for a cash seizure. Six weeks later, with her case cold and bureaucratic frustration boiling, newly promoted Lieutenant Dane Dumars (Matt Damon) acts on her lead. He assembles his tight-knit Tactical Narcotics Team (TNT), including his volatile old friend Detective Sergeant J.D. Byrne (Ben Affleck), the calculating Mike Ro (Steven Yeun), and detectives Numa Baptiste (Teyana Taylor) and Lolo Salazar (Catalina Sandino Moreno). Their target: a derelict house at the end of a sleepy cul-de-sac, expected to hold a modest score.

Occupied by a young woman named Desi (Sasha Calle), her late-grandmother’s house contains barrels neatly packed with more than $20 million. This amount changes things from a simple rip to a life-altering temptation. Dane’s immediate decision to withhold the true amount from his superiors is the first crack in the team’s foundation. As they are forced to hole up and count the mountain of cash on-site — a procedural requirement that makes them sitting ducks — the initial adrenaline curdles into suspicion. The streets outside remain eerily empty; no cartel enforcers arrive. The silence is not relief but an accusation. As one character notes, what began as a dangerous job starts to feel “more and more like an inside operation.”

Carnahan and Michael McGrale construct a fast-paced, brilliantly claustrophobic mystery. Much of the film unfolds within the stash house. Juanmi Azpiroz’s cinematography, employing an ultra-wide aspect ratio and a monochromatic, Michael Mann-esque palette, drenches everything in oppressive gloom. The sun is conspicuously absent in the Sunshine State, replaced by night skies and interior shadows that hide as much as they reveal. This visual style does well to mimic the narrative: nothing is clear, everyone is partially obscured, and trust becomes impossible to discern.

The film’s greatest strength is its exceptional cast and the non-stop adrenalin ride that kicks off and does not let up until the final frame. This is not a story of cartoonish villains but of flawed individuals grappling with desperation, grief and the tantalizing power of escape. Matt Damon’s Dane is a raw nerve buried under a stoic facade, a man grieving his young son and shouldering a promotion he knows has bred resentment. Ben Affleck’s J.D. is all simmering rage and wounded pride, his friendship (and competition) with Dane fraying into something dangerous. Their real-life chemistry makes their conflict uniquely compelling; when they throw down, it feels like watching a foundational bond rupture.

The script is tight and focused, layering twists with purposeful misdirection, occasionally giving the “Ocean’s Eleven”-esque style of showing audiences where the misdirections happened as the plot unfolds. The central question — who is clean, and who is dirty? — is sustained through meticulous editing that cuts between reaction shots, encouraging the audience to play detective alongside the characters.

However, “The Rip” is not without its flaws. As the tension culminates, Carnahan pivots to more conventional, loud action sequences. A chase involving a standard police cruiser and a heavy armored vehicle, and a lone detective pursuing an armed suspect through woods at night, stretch believability in ways the earlier, character-focused scenes carefully avoid. These moments feel like a concession to genre expectations and momentarily pull focus from the intricate human drama that makes the film so compelling. Additionally, a late-epilogue set on a conspicuously fake-looking Florida beach undermines the gritty authenticity established (and, honestly, feels more like an intimate moment of mutual assurance between Damen and Affleck on their decision to release a straight-to-streaming movie rather than a theatrical release). 

Yet, these foibles do not ruin the experience. “The Rip” succeeds because it trusts its audience to follow a complex plot while exploring potent themes of institutional corruption, economic desperation and the corrosive tendency of temptation. It is a film more interested in the messiness of motives than the cleanliness of a shootout; more invested in the crackle of distrust between friends than in generic cartel villains. While its descent into a more routine action finale prevents it from reaching heights like “The Oceans” series or “Heat,” it is a consistently engaging and satisfyingly tense ride from start to finish. It proves that sometimes the most gripping heist is not the one planned by an outlaw, but the one that happens in the hearts and minds of those sworn to uphold the law. ♦