Following the murder of their Captain, a team of Miami cops are thrown further into turmoil when they discover millions of dollars of cartel money in a house. Can they trust each other? Is one of their number accountable for their leader’s murder? And should they just take the money for themselves? 

I had high hopes for The Rip. Writer/Director Joe Carnahan’s career was catapulted into the A-List when he delivered Narc in 2002, a searing crime film about duplicity and corruption in the police force. Since then, though, he has only delivered a few films that live up to the quality of Narc. Here, though, he has a wonderful cast to call on to deliver another tension-filled crime movie. 

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck lead the squad with all of the chemistry their lifelong friendship affords. Their characters have a simmering tension over the fact that Damon’s character beat Affleck’s character to be team leader, and when the former starts to behave a little less than by the book, the latter starts to get concerned. Surrounding these leads is an array of great character actors as well. Steven Yuen and Teyana Taylor play other members of the squad, Kyle Chandler plays a DEA agent, and Scott Adkins plays an FBI agent who also happens to be the brother of Affleck’s character. 

Everything should be set for a tense thriller about dirty cops and murderous cartels. 

The issue is that it never really fires at all. The idea here is that the situation and stress the team are in should build into a pressure cooker, before an explosion of violence and the reveal of what is truly happening. Unfortunately, very little tension builds, the explosion of action is a mostly incoherent hail of bullets with little impact, and the reveal is something that I guessed long before it happens.

There is some mileage in the performances, and it is always great to see Damon and Affleck sparring onscreen. Ultimately, though, this is rather a disappointment.