The Instigators

No matter how much heft the Actors Equity team brings to the project on both sides of the camera, there's simply no evading the fact that the movie plays as so inconsequential, so free of meaning and purpose, that it offers nothing to grab onto.

It should be pulpy fun powered by car chases and zippy repartee, but The Instigators is a dispiriting and predictable drag of a movie.

Certainly, all the ingredients are here for a fun night in, from the absolutely killer cast to the familiar Damon/Affleck stomping grounds of Boston. But nothing quite clicks in this tale of charming low-life thieves.

Liman, Affleck and Damon move with confidence through the blunders and bad luck, settling into a relaxed groove of comic bickering.

So if the plot of “The Instigators” kind of goes nowhere, its characters give it the feel of a hangout movie with some added shootouts and car chases and a few well-timed explosions. And that, at least, is wicked good.

Back in the 1970s, The Instigators would probably have been the second or third best movie coming out on any given week. In 2024, it’s Hollywood’s best movie this month, at least for viewers who don’t marvel at Marvel.

Also, has anyone been saying what a great actor Casey Affleck is? His performances are powerful, emotional, real, purposely un-showey. His low-key retorts in this film are sharp, edgy, and hard-hitting despite their carefully understated delivery.

This is like if The Departed was an airplane movie, and that’s fine with me. We don’t get a lot of these.

It's fun to see Damon play an idiot (even if the "taking notes at a criminal conspiracy" line was ripped off from The Wire), but Chau is the only factor making this even a mild recommend.

It is hard to watch Matt Damon play so dumb next to Casey Affleck’s sleepy comic mannerisms in an overly plotted but thinly scripted heist film crossed with political corruption that is part of the definition of this era’s direct-to-streaming content.