For some, the best news about the new film starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck, The Instigators, is that it’s not a sequel to their original pairing, the 2002 Gus Van Sant-directed Gerry, which was a somewhat amusing Waiting for Godot update. Instead, we get the latest from Doug Liman (his second film this year, after the Roadhouse remake), who worked with Damon on the original Bourne Identity and made some impressive action movies over the years, without a doubt. The Instigators is also part action movie, part character study, part smarmy comedy, in which Damon plays a retired Marine named Rory, who needs a very specific amount of money in a hurry and is willing to commit his first crime to get it.
Set in Boston (shocking), the film begins with a heist in which a small-time crime boss (Michael Stuhlbarg) and his right-hand man (Alfred Molina) hire a small crew to rob the city’s highly corrupt mayor (Ron Perlman). They believe he is about to win re-election against an underdog opponent, Mark Choi (Ronnie Cho), who actually ends up winning. The theft is of money given to the mayor in order to have the privilege of attending his victory party, an amount that typically runs in the tens of millions. So while the party is presumably in full swing, the crooks sweep in and steal the cash. But with no victory, things are off, and it turns out that there was so much cash “donated” in advance, it’s already been picked up and moved somewhere safe. When Rory and the rest of the crew, which includes Affleck’s frequently drunk Cobby and team leader Scalvo (Jack Harlow), arrive, there’s almost no money to be had.
Rory is particularly in need of cash because of his recent divorce and losing custody of his son. His ex-wife won’t let him visit their kid until he pays back child support and other expenses, and all he wants out of this robbery is enough to cover those expenses (about $32,000). So when the robbery goes south, Scalvo improvises and starts stealing valuables and wallets from anyone in the building, accidentally stumbling into a gathering that includes the mayor, the police chief, and a massive security detail. After stealing a gold bracelet from the mayor, a fire fight kicks off, Scalvo is killed, Cobby is shot, and he and Rory barely make it out alive, with the mayor eager to retrieve the bracelet (sentimental value, he claims) and vacate the offices before Choi’s supporters storm the mayor’s office that the outgoing mayor won’t vacate, refusing to even concede that he lost the race.
The mayor contacts a “solver” in the police force, Frankie (Ving Rhames), to find and take care of Rory and Cobby, using whatever means necessary. The fact that he drives an armored vehicle gives you some clue what means we’re talking about. Meanwhile, the crime boss who hired them sends his own goon (Paul Walter Hauser) to find them and eliminate any link between the crime and the boss. The boys go from place to place attempting to hide long enough to patch up Cobby and make a plan, with one button man or another hot on their trail.
Aside from the occasional well-staged chase sequence, your entertainment value from The Instigators will likely depend on how much you enjoy listening to these two knuckleheads bust each others’ balls. These two aren’t regular partners, but there’s a sense that they have a history; still, we never really find out what happened between them. Rory is clearly no criminal mastermind, but at least his military training makes him good at some of the heavy lifting with weapons and vehicles. Cobby fancies himself the idea man, but he’s also a drunk, so his ideas are a little fuzzy.
It’s their banter that kept me engaged in the rest of the story. These two actors are old buddies, so they have a natural rhythm, and the way they tell people to “Go fuck your mother” is almost too perfectly Boston. My favorite scenes happen when the two pretend to kidnap Rory’s therapist, Dr. Donna Rivera (the great Hong Chau), so she can patch up Cobby and give both some on-the-fly therapy sessions. She agrees to be kidnapped so she won’t feel like an accomplice. And over the course of the film, we start to learn bits and pieces about these characters in ways that begin to ever-so-slightly resemble development.
The film ends with a big shootout and yet another attempted heist (this time of much more money from the mayor’s office), in which the pair find themselves stuck with the mayor’s squirrely attorney (Toby Jones), who seems more than willing to cooperate and give up the goods on the outgoing mayor. Written by Chuck MacLean and Affleck and co-produced by Damon and frequent creative partner Ben Affleck, The Instigators is a low-stakes actioner with a stacked cast that occasionally elevates its subpar material. It is hardly unwatchable, as some are claiming, but I can’t imagine ever wanting to revisit it or these characters again. While I found parts of the plot uninspired, I found some moments amusing, others exciting, and the specificity of the Boston location and people charming in a vulgar way. You could do a lot worse this weekend.
The film is now streaming on Apple TV+.
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