“The Instigators” is now streaming on Apple TV+ and in select theaters.
The Instigators is the first time you can reasonably describe a film as a Damon/Affleck vehicle and then have to figure out which Affleck. Everyone knows the heartwarming story of Matt and Ben, best friends from Boston who later acted in films together, hosted a competition show about films together and wrote an Oscar-winning screenplay together. What has received less and less attention is Damon’s relationship on and off the screen with the other Affleck’s brother Casey. This could be partly due to the molestation allegations that have been hanging over the younger brother for several years. (Who wants to support a bromance when one half of it is problematic?) But it could also be that the films that Matt and Casey have made together so far – the Ocean’s trilogy, a couple Christopher Nolan blockbuster – don’t center their dynamic. The one time before they directed a film together, it consisted of two guys named Gerry They wandered aimlessly through the desert and hardly said anything to each other.
Casey Affleck co-wrote The Instigators, which perhaps explains why it’s the first proper showcase of his lifelong friendship with Damon. Like Good Will Hunting, which both Afflecks starred in, the film is even set in Boston, allowing the stars to revert to their hometown accents and embrace their respective roots as goofy working-class Massholes. The charm of this easygoing crime film rests almost entirely on the untapped chemistry between the pair – a buddy comedy relationship that’s more sizzling and arguably funnier than The Matt and Ben Show.
Damon plays Rory, an ex-Marine trying to get back on his feet after spectacularly destroying his life and marriage. While the actor’s similarly Bostonian character in The Departed joked that psychoanalysis was wasted on a Southern punk like him, Rory does his best to work through his issues with a therapist (Hong Chau). It’s a pretty hackneyed role – the saintly movie failure, a regular guy who just wants to see his son again – but Damon makes him sympathetic and lovable enough in his contrite remorse.
Rory needs a specific amount of money to pay off a mountain of child support debt, and that noble goal naturally leads him into some ignoble business. He ends up in the third part of a blitz – a plan to rob the incumbent mayor’s (Ron Perlman) victory party on election night. His accomplices: Affleck’s ex-con Cobby, who is entertainingly introduced when he convinces a neighborhood kid to help him take a breathalyzer test, and the supposed mastermind of the operation, an equally error-prone crook played – through a repetitive barrage of F-bombs – by rapper Jack Harlow.
“The Instigators” has the setup of a hard-hitting crime thriller, complete with a montage that takes us through the planning stages and a “one last job” that is destined to go wrong. And wrong it definitely does; for starters, the wrong guy wins the election! But just when we’re primed to watch the walls close in on these hapless criminals, the film takes a different direction. Director Doug Liman has inverted the structure of his recent COVID comedy “Locked Down,” which only became a heist movie in the home stretch. Here, the botched robbery is the catalyst for something more relaxed: a comedy on the run, in which our unlikely heroes — one humiliated, the other a smart-ass, both classic klutzes — flee from the authorities and the bosses alike.
With its playful funk music by Christophe Beck and a plot that devolves into a tangled mess of Elmore Leonard-style mishaps, the film often feels like Soderbergh lite. Liman assembles a first-rate cast of character actors to play the various strands of his small Boston crime empire, including Michael Stuhlbarg, Alfred Molina, Toby Jones, Paul Walter Hauser and—for the full Out of Sight effect—Ving Rhames as a cool fixer hot on the tail of the Boston Boys. The ensemble is so packed with effortless talent that you hardly mind how arbitrary the story of corruption that connects them all is. (Were this a real Soderbergh film, it would take a clearer stance on the intersection of blue-collar and white-collar crime.) Affleck and his co-writer Chuck Maclean are sharper on the small, absurd details, like a long debate about how many personnel you can expect at the wheel of an armored truck at any given time.
Rory and Cobby, who never quite stop bickering, eventually bring the former’s psychiatrist into the plot, not so much taking her hostage as giving her a believable deniability to help a couple of bumbling fugitives. She continues her streak of being believable in pretty much everything – be it a maudlin Oscar grab like The whale or quirky sci-fi comedy like Staff reductions — Chau conveys the predicament of a psychiatrist torn between following protocol and doing what’s best for her client. Yet her calming presence and off-the-cuff sitcom diagnoses (turns out these two men could use some couch time!) underscore The Instigators’ larger problem. Rory and Cobby don’t seem particularly concerned, even as they narrowly escape the crosshairs of the men who want them dead, and that’s probably because they’re never really in any danger. For all its shootouts and explosions and multi-car chases, The Instigators is too fixated on its good vibes to flirt with any real urgency. It’s a crime thriller so laid-back that it practically slips the audience a tranquilizer.
Liman, who introduced Damon to the action hero A-list with The Bourne Identity a few decades ago, finds ways to squander money. (There is a climax second fire truck robbery that probably costs as much money as the characters are trying to steal.) But overall, The Instigators is closer to the director’s debut in its talky, small-scale spirit, Swingerswith Damon taking the role of Jon Favreau and Affleck bringing some of the sarcastic attitude of Vince Vaughn. Although the film is full of familiar faces, it basically comes down to the clashing personalities of its stars, bringing the familiarity of childlike camaraderie to a pair of strangers who grow closer over their increasing bad luck. With apologies to Ben, The It might be worth taking another look at the Damon/Affleck pairing.
