‘The Rip’ Review: Matt Damon and Ben Affleck Face Temptation in Joe Carnahan’s Crime Thriller (Netflix)

What would you do if you stumbled upon 20 million dollars that no one seems to be claiming? That question sets the plot in motion for The Rip, a lean action-suspense thriller with modest formal ambitions but a cast worthy of a big-budget studio production. Directed by Joe Carnahan —a prolific filmmaker behind titles such as The Grey, Boss Level and Shadow Force, a veteran with more than a dozen films to his name, most of them proudly B-movie fare— the film is deliberately contained, almost intimate. Most of the action takes place in and around a single house. Yet its lineup includes Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Teyana Taylor, Steven Yeun, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Sasha Calle, and Kyle Chandler, among others. That ensemble does a great deal of heavy lifting, allowing a plot that initially feels somewhat confusing and repetitive to gradually gain depth, ingenuity, and a touch of genuine drama.

The story opens with the brutal murder of a Miami police officer by two masked assailants, followed by an FBI investigation that places several of her colleagues under scrutiny. Many of them are suspected of knowing more than they admit — or of being involved in some kind of corruption. Among those questioned are the unit’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Dane Dumars (Damon), and his second-in-command, Sergeant JD Byrne (Affleck), as well as detectives Mike Ro (Yeun), Numa Baptiste (Taylor), and Lolo Salazar (Sandino Moreno). During a series of tense interviews, it becomes clear that all of them are dealing with emotional strain and growing discomfort as suspicion hangs heavily in the air.

It is at this point that Dane receives an anonymous tip claiming that a drug gang is hiding a large sum of money in a nearby house. “One hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” Dane tells the team. They head there with what appears to be a straightforward mission: locate the cash, count it, secure it, and turn it over to the authorities. At the house they encounter Desi (Calle), a young woman who insists she has no idea what they are talking about. But when the trained money-sniffing dog goes berserk, Desi has little choice but to let them inside. At first, nothing seems out of the ordinary — until they discover a container hidden behind an attic panel, filled with far more money than expected. To Dane’s and JD’s astonishment, it soon becomes clear that this is not the only container hidden in the house. There are many more.

From that moment on, the team’s official duty is to count the money and deliver it intact. But Dane begins to behave oddly. He asks everyone — except JD — to hand over their phones and starts hinting that he may have other ideas about what should be done with the cash. JD wants no part in anything illegal and quickly contacts a DEA agent, Matty Nix (Chandler), hoping to put a stop to whatever Dane is planning. As stacks of bills are counted, each person involved begins to reveal their own desires and rationalizations. Most of them arrive at the same conclusion: no one will miss the difference between hundreds of thousands and tens of millions. What they fail to consider are two things — the possibility of internal betrayal, and the fact that the money does belong to someone, who may not be willing to simply let it go.

For much of its first half, The Rip plays as a tense drama about potential police corruption. Carnahan patiently introduces the characters in their professional environment, sketching their relationships — sometimes friendly, sometimes strained — and their individual approaches to the job, before arriving at the central moral dilemma of what to do with the money. In the second half, aided by several unexpected twists, the story leaves the house behind and turns overtly violent, concentrating most of its action set pieces there.

Carnahan’s screenplay is more intricate than it initially appears, and the film rewards close attention to procedural details. Many things that seem straightforward at first end up revealing hidden angles. While the twists are not on the level of The Usual Suspects, the film is richer if viewers connect the dots and track how different events relate to one another. In that sense, the cast is essential: no one is exactly who they seem to be, and almost everyone is hiding something.

Damon stands out in particular, but the entire ensemble contributes — including Affleck, who is more convincing here than he often is. Actresses such as the now-awarded Teyana Taylor (recently seen in One Battle After Another) and Sandino Moreno are given relatively minor roles, but they still leave a strong impression. Dry, intense, and carefully structured, The Rip remains faithful to Carnahan’s grounded aesthetic and his blunt, no-nonsense approach to crime cinema, rooted in the best traditions of Hollywood B-movies. And compared to the routine mediocrity of many streaming releases, it feels almost like a luxury.