This review contains spoilers.
Several hours after finishing the Netflix original film “The Rip,” I still had trouble figuring out whether I’d actually liked the movie or not.
Released Friday, “The Rip” is the type of film that keeps you guessing. At the climax of the movie, each scene felt like a loaded gun. Even so, it’s certainly not a groundbreaking piece of work for the American film industry.
It’s not even a particularly striking film for director Joe Carnahan, whose body of work consists of movies that run in the same genre of gritty, action-thrillers that often center on drugs.
Most of the movie is set in a house in Miami that is hiding over $20 million in cartel cash. The Tactical Narcotics Team, which makes up our main cast of characters, stays confined within a few hundred square feet of one another for the majority of the film, creating a sense of claustrophobia that raises the stakes of the movie.
Despite the film’s poor lighting and color-grading choices, which remain a sickly blue-green for almost the entire runtime, the confined space puts the audience sufficiently on edge.
As the narcotics team counts the illegal money on-site per protocol, they begin to speculate on one another’s loyalties and the mysterious murder of their late captain, which seems to be linked to the house and its criminal cash. The owner of the house, Desiree Lopez Molina (Sasha Calle), begins to suspect that some members of TNT might be trying to steal some of the money for themselves.
“The Rip” loses its tension once it leaves the confines of the house. In the final act of the film, TNT splits up, with half of its members driving off in an armored vehicle. The audience is subsequently plunged into a high-speed, poorly lit action sequence that, quite frankly, was rather boring and drained all the tension brought by the cramped house.
Despite its subpar ending, “The Rip” is somewhat redeemed by its critically acclaimed cast. Academy Award-winning actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck played the two leads of the film, the grief-ridden Lieutenant Dane Dumars (Damon) and his right-hand man, Detective Sergeant J.D. Byrne (Affleck).
Standout performances came from the supporting cast. Detective Numa Baptiste (Teyana Taylor) and Detective Mike Ro (Steven Yeun) made the movie, despite having less dialogue and screentime.
Taylor and Yeun’s chemistry with the rest of the cast and flawless execution of complex emotions like panic, doubt and guilt breathed color into the film.
However, despite the star-power of its cast, “The Rip” struggles with a subpar script that relies almost entirely on swearing and loosely developed character drama.
An early scene features Dumars and Byrne commiserating over the loss of their TNT captain in a bathroom. The two characters traded profanity-ridden comments back-and-forth for around three minutes, to the point where it became awkward to watch.
This behavior continues for the entirety of the film’s nearly two-hour runtime, and it becomes clear that the writers’ idea of gritty is just stuffing in as many swears as possible.
Even several hours of pondering and a written review have not been enough to make up my mind on this film. Watch it for the stellar performances, skip it for the blatant copaganda and poor writing decisions. “The Rip” is a thrilling film that is sure to split viewers’ opinions in two.
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