By Dan Skip Allen 

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are Academy Award winners for writing the script for Good Will Hunting. Ever since they were kids, they’ve been friends and colleagues.They’ve worked together on a few other occasions besides that film. Air,Dogma, and The Last Duel, to name a few. Their latest collaboration, “The RIP”, is another Artists Equity Production and streams on Netflix this Friday. It’s a crime drama based on true events, and it’s directed by Joe Carnahan, who’s no stranger to this kind of movie.

A woman is shot dead in cold blood, but before she dies, she throws her phone in a body of water in a cold opening. Captain  Jacky Velez (Lina Esco).  Lt. Dane Dumars (Matt Damon) is a Miami detective, and he’s being interviewed by internal affairs because of a tragedy that happened the day before to one of his colleagues. Also, being interviewed is another member of his special Ops Team, Detective Sergeant JD Byrne (Ben Affleck) TNT (Tactical Narcotics Team), by the FBI. Nobody knows what happened to this woman, but an anonymous tip is called in that leads the team members to a house in Hialeah, Florida. Which is close to the Miami area.

In the movie The Rip, “RIP” doesn’t stand for “Rest in Peace,” as you’d expect but is Miami police slang for the act of confiscating illegal goods or large amounts of cash, known as “taking the bad guy’s stuff” or “ripping it”. That’s where going to this house comes into effect. They meet a woman there, Desi (Sacha Calle), who lives there, but she doesn’t know anything about why they’re there. They suggest that there is an important reason why they were sent to this house. After going to the attic, they find out why. They smash the walls, and there are buckets full of cash in them. This is considered the reason why their colleague was killed, but there is more to the story than this.

The supporting cast is filled with fantastic actors who make up most of the other police officers on this team. Detective Mike Ro (Steven Yeun), Scott Adkins, an FBI Agent and the brother of the Affleck character, Nix (Kyle Chandler), a detective on a different task force in the city, Detective Numa Baptiste (Teyana Taylor), and Detective Lolo Salazar (Catalina Sandino Moreno). Once they are at this house, they are in a cat and mouse game with each other and the previous characters I already mentioned. Nobody can figure out why the money was in the walls of this house, and the big question is what should they do with the money now that it’s in their custody. 

The film is mainly set in the house, but there are a couple of pretty cool action sequences. The first is a car chase where multiple cars are chasing multiple assailants and everybody is firing guns at each other. Then, a chase on foot happens where the two main characters are chasing assailants who have things that they want back. The house scenes were pretty interesting, though, because there was a lot of back and forth between characters. The dialogue was fascinating because you don’t know who is telling the truth. Finding out who to trust is very difficult in this situation. If you are paying attention, you might be able to figure out who’s lying and who’s telling the truth. This movie is a classic, whodunit, but it has some other good elements. 

One of those elements is the cinematography by Jaun Miguel Azpiros. He was able to do two things with his camera work I rarely see in films these days. The first is to give a great look to a movie that is mainly shot at night. He used police lights, light poles, house lights, and headlights on cars and other vehicles to give the film a very good look at night. This is one of the best lit movies I’ve seen in a long time regarding it mostly being at night. The second part of this is the movement in the house sequence and at the police headquarters. He uses the movements of the characters nicely to help create a tense atmosphere. He is definitely a cinematographer I’ll be keeping my eyes on in the future.

Damon and Affleck have a short hand with each other. They worked together so much that they made it easy to watch them act. They are literally playing a cat and mouse game within the context of the story. That being said, their familiarity with one another can be a detriment to the film. They wanted to work together because of their friends, but it seemed to me that there was something going on in this story. I kind of figured out the end of the story. It was something that seemed very obvious to me. Maybe it will be with others who watched this movie. The contrivances and lack of a better word, convoluted story, made it not as enjoyable as I would have otherwise thought it would be. 

“The RIP” was an interesting story for me because it took place in my home state of Florida and was based on true events. It starred two of my favorite actors working today, Affleck and Damon, and was directed by a good action director, Carnahan. It had a lot of aspects and a cast I liked quite a bit. Even the camera work was very well done. Not having heard about this story was good for me, but it didn’t help me because I figured out what was going on quite easily. I’m sad when I watch a film and I know what’s going to happen before it is half over. That’s not a good thing. Maybe others will enjoy this movie, but I was bored with it because of the predictable story elements. 

2 ½ stars