This crime comedy runs out of cash.
Besides the “Ocean’s Eleven” trilogy, Matt Damon and Casey Affleck have also appeared in other movies-together or separate-like “Interstellar,” “Good Will Hunting,” “Oppenheimer,” “Gerry,” and “Chasing Amy.” And Affleck did star in my favorite movie of the 2010s “Manchester by the Sea,” which was also produced by Damon.
Their latest movie together, “The Instigators,” has them once again playing thieves. Few things. Damon is the struggling Roy, while Affleck co-writes himself as the wisecracking Cobby. The story takes place in Boston. And the movie itself is inferior to the “Ocean’s Eleven” trilogy, in terms of its convoluted screenplay, its flimsy lead characters, and very few laughs.
I know this will be a hit on AppleTV+, but if you have seen a movie like this, there’s nothing much that’s original. A portion of you readers might find it as escapism, but I find it overblown entertainment.
As the film begins, the corrupt Mayor Miccelli (Ron Perlman) has won the election 4 years and running, even though his position has given the city nothing but crime, which is why he has his protestors. And he has also a substantial of dirty money on the way. So, the crime boss Mr. Besegai (Michael Stuhlbarg) assigns Roy, Cobby, and the young trigger happy idiot Scalvo (Jack Harlow) to rob him. This could be ideal for Roy, considering that he needs his share of the money to see his son.
Unfortunately for them, the job gets botched, which results in Scalvo killing a cop, that idiot getting himself killed, Cobby getting shot, and he and Roy going on the run.
They’re both forced to take Roy’s therapist Dr. Donna Rivera (Hong Chau) hostage, when he asks her to fix Cobby’s bullet wound. And since she’s obligated to Roy as her patient, she has no recourse but to tag along.
There are two sets of laughs in “The Instigators.”
The first regards the bantering between Cobby and Donna, as they’re part of a big police chase, as she tries to talk some sense in the driver Roy. After the chase, she’s able to read him the way we, the viewers, can’t. And his response is just typical of any person who can’t acknowledge their own problems on their own.
And the other regards Cobby’s decision to run to Montreal, which sounds like a difficult idea considering the cold time of the year and the border, while Roy suggests robbing a bank. They both disagree with each other’s ideas, and I couldn’t disagree more.
But most of “The Instigators” doesn’t allow us to see the chemistry between Damon and Affleck, and a movie starring them should be as entertaining as some of their previous films I’ve mentioned in the first paragraph. There are supporting characters you can’t read or care about. In fact, a percentage of them are annoying. And the only one who stands out is Donna, and she’s nicely played here by Chau, so I think her character should be taken out of this movie, and placed in another one of the genre. As long as it does things we wouldn’t have guessed a crime comedy would do.
It was directed by Doug Liman, who hasn’t made a good movie since “American Made,” and I think he should reconnect with his glory days, instead of settling for cliches and formulas. He has a top notch cast (which also finds room for Paul Walter Hauser, Ving Rhames and Alfred Molina), but he doesn’t have the originality and attitude to keep things moving.
If anything, it’s this movie that needs therapy more than Roy does.
Streaming on AppleTV+
