What to do when faced with $20 million? “The Rip” is the answer Matt Damon and Ben Affleck reunite for a Netflix crime thriller
There is a trend in crime films, and it’s that of the corrupt cops. You can be sure that, in these stories, sooner or later one of the few characters in the film will turn out to be a traitor. This doesn’t limit the genre, but it certainly sets the guidelines: the story must therefore compensate where obviousness is around the corner and focus on the factor of engagement rather than seeking the surprise effect. This is what The Rip - Dirty Money, Netflix’s new original, tried to do.
A film in which Matt Damon returns, far from the glorious days of The Departed, Martin Scorsese’s work that more than any other shows what and how to move within a highly codified genre. A title written and directed by Joe Carnahan, whose filmography moves between crime and testosterone-fueled thrillers, whose intensity is very high here as well, but the choice of a strong team and the smoothing of certain aspects that could have weighed down the work make The Rip a fairly solid option for an evening on the platform.
Unfailingly alongside Damon is his partner Ben Affleck, returning to crime films for the third consecutive year after Robert Rodriguez’s 2023 Hypnotic and reprising the role of Christian Wolff in Gavin O’Connor’s 2025 sequel The Accountant 2. The duo is a well-oiled team, where Affleck’s strong presence (even in terms of acting) balances the subtler skill of his colleague and friend Damon. But it is particularly interesting to see how faces like Teyana Taylor, coming off her Golden Globe win for Licorice Pizza and headed towards a possible Oscar, and Steven Yeun, whose portfolio ranges from mainstream titles like the TV series The Walking Dead to auteur cinema with films like Burning by Lee Chang-dong, swirl around them.
The few characters driving the story find themselves inside a house in the middle of a heist involving a lot of money - more than expected. A twenty million dollar loot, some of which, if it went missing, no one would notice. It is on this principle of loyalty and respect toward one’s work that the moral dilemma of The Rip - Dirty Money is based. It is not deeply explored or dissected, and it does not lead the characters to reflect on the social and human condition dictated by their economic status. The amount of money the protagonists deal with is merely the lever to open the door to entertainment, to build subterfuge and suspicion for both the characters and the viewers, who try to solve the case themselves while sitting on the couch.
The Rip sufficiently fulfills its purpose. The police team is cohesive, the various plot twists are explained each time, and the ambiguity over who are the good and bad characters, even when it becomes clearer, remains consistent with the spirit of the film, which moves smoothly and directly toward the resolution. At times, the performances may feel over the top, and sometimes the scenes themselves are (the opening prologue and its editing cuts are particularly poor, which caused some initial concern), but ultimately everything falls into place, with the traitors on one side and those trying to maintain their own code of honor on the other, even in despair. A work about what we are willing to become (and what we are not) when faced with an amount that could change our lives. Always remembering that true wealth is what we carry inside, even if, when confronted with twenty million dollars, it’s easy to forget it.
