REVIEW: ‘The Rip’ Packs Ensemble Genre Heat

For an action-thriller starring notorious friends and collaborators Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, the rollout for The Rip has been surprisingly quiet. The Netflix marketing machine, of course, is giving the film its full due, but the gritty cop drama seems to have crept into an uncommonly buzzy January where flicks like Primate and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple dominate the conversation.

Freed from the burden of heavy expectations, The Rip is entirely what The Rip needs to be. This is a sleek, compact thriller that, although more exciting in journey than destination, remains an engaging ride due to its robust ensemble.

In Hialeah, Florida, a Miami-Dade Police Department task force led by Lieutenant Dane Dumars (Matt Damon) receives a tip about a stash house that may contain a small bounty of cartel funds. As his team, co-led by Detective Sergeant JD Byrne (Ben Affleck), enters the home and subdues the home’s resident, Desi (Sasha Calle), they find that their “small bounty” is tens of millions. Their simple mission of seizure gets a lot more complicated as members of the team begin to act suspiciously and the allure of this much off-the-record cash comes into play. 

Director Joe Carnahan delivers a well-executed crime thriller.

Writer-director Joe Carnahan has made some serious bangers in the action-thriller space. Smokin’ Aces and the contemplative The Grey have retained small but devoted cult followings. In contrast, even some of his more recent offerings, such as Boss Level and Copshop, have been impressive, if under-discussed.

He knows what he’s doing behind a camera, with Carnahan and his crew firing on all aesthetic cylinders. One could call The Rip a bit stylized. The descriptor is fair, although a little misleading, as The Rip deploys its handsome formal elements to establish a distinct mood rather than to be flashy.

Cinematographer Juanmi Azpiroz captures the claustrophobia and grime of the stash house’s close quarters, while Clinton Shorter’s score feels like its sole mission is to keep raising the audience’s heart rate. The latter is especially satisfying, with the largest “BWOM”s this side of It: Chapter One and Inception giving the film a memorable musical character.

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon deliver committed performances as JD Byrne and Dane Dumars.

Within this tense aura, Carnahan’s screenplay stages a classic potboiler, where audiences are constantly guessing at characters’ allegiances and when/if outside forces will make their appearance. The Rip loves to toy with the audience, and, frankly, it’s fun to be toyed with by Carnahan’s film.

It should come as no surprise that the film’s de facto leads, Affleck and Damon, are fantastic in this. Affleck has shown his chops in genre for a good while, most recently in The Accountant 2. On Damon’s side, however, it’s been a second since he’s splashed around in these waters, and he is up to the challenge.

Dane Dumars is, for the bulk of the runtime, an unreadable character, and Damon stays several steps ahead of the audience in a performance from a huge star that’s uncommonly committed. That’s because Damon and Affleck aren’t interested in being “above” the material; they play it with complete seriousness.

The Netflix film is strengthened by a talented ensemble. 

The same very much goes for the film’s committed ensemble that makes up The Rip’s biggest asset. Here, we have much-lauded performers like Steven Yeun (Invincible), the One Battle After Another phenomenon Teyana Taylor, along with Kyle Chandler and relative newcomers such as Sasha Calle (The Flash), and severely underrated actors like Catalina Sandino Moreno, all throwing themselves into their roles.

Everybody showed up to work and then some, making watching them play off each other contain the gravitas of something like 12 Angry Men. Seeing this level of performance from names both smaller and larger embracing the genre material is oddly heartwarming.

Naturally, there’s a “too good to be true” catch to The Rip. It’s not a movie-breaking one, but it is significant. You see, with so many twists and turns and the characters’ allegiances playing into each other, eventually Joe Carnahan has to answer the audience’s burning questions, telling us what the hell is going on. And the answers we get, while briefly exciting, don’t really live up to the thrill of getting there. 

While fun, The Rip refuses to dig deeper than surface level. 

There’s a ton of build, and instead of fireworks, it’s more like a pack of firecrackers going off. We got the bang for our buck, yet not quite as explosive as it could have been. Furthermore, in the socio-political landscape of 2026, The Rip has surprisingly little to say about the police as an institution.

Is it required to? Not necessarily. Let it be known, though, that early on in the film, an interrogation of the powers that be does start to take shape, only to sort of just… deflate by the end. The Rip’s biggest boon outside its cast- its compact, intentional nature- is sadly what prevents it from digging too much deeper.

It all comes back to, though, that The Rip is great at being The Rip. At its core, the film is just a damn good action-thriller that gives its ensemble cast the chance to shine and doesn’t outstay its welcome. As long as there’s a desire for a well-acted chamber piece with some panache, there’s always going to be a place for The Rip.

The Rip streams on Netflix on January 16, 2026.