Familiarity abounds in The Instigators, but something in the formula feels off. Inauspiciously being released on Apple TV+ after a mostly perfunctory, one-week theatrical release, the film plays like all the most well-spun DVDs — or most viewed streaming selections, to update the reference to 2024 — at a college fraternity were fed into an algorithm to produce something designed to endure as late-night comfort food for the backwards baseball cap crowd. In its broad strokes, the film is something of a layup; almost impossible to truly screw up. A Boston-set caper about two mismatched criminals — one a stoic novice, the other a motor-mouthed ex-con — who find themselves evading the mob, the police, and the corrupt political establishment, the film feels like the sort of thing conceived during a not unconstructive brainstorming session about what would happen if you combined The Town with Midnight Run (admit it, you’re already smiling a little at the idea). And yet, for all the comedic bickering, gunplay, and vehicular mayhem — not to mention the genuinely impressive amount of talent involved — there’s a real lack of “stickiness” to the film; no memorable set pieces, quotable lines, notable stylistic flourishes, or ingenious twists. The film has the outline of a rollicking good time, but nobody bothered to shade in between the lines.
It’s not simply the premise and setting that feels familiar; The Instigators also functions as a series of mini-reunions of collaborators that audiences have varying levels of affection toward. The film stars Matt Damon as Rory, a clinically depressed ex-marine who’s given himself a rapidly approaching 12 months to turn his life around before he “cashes in his ticket” (in perhaps a nod to Damon’s breakthrough role in Good Will Hunting, the film opens with the character in a tetchy therapy session). Rory’s psychiatrist, Dr. Rivera, is played by Damon’s Downsizing costar Hong Chau with a mix of no-nonsense empathy and screwball aplomb, particularly later in the film once the character finds herself being taken “hostage” to patch up bullet wounds and hasten Rory’s getaways. For reasons that are teased out over the course of the film but are easy enough to deduce, Rory is in desperate need of $32,000 and change and, in his desperation, is pulled in at the last moment to a score being orchestrated by mid-tier gangster Mr. Besegai (the great character actor Michael Stuhlbarg, spectacularly miscast as a heavy with a bushy salt and pepper beard, a neck tattoo, and a try-hard Southie accent). The plan involves three gunmen taking down several hundred thousand dollars in unreported cash payoffs and illegal political donations earmarked for the ultra-corrupt Mayor Miccelli (Ron Perlman) at a victory party following a January runoff election. For reasons never entirely made clear, the scheme hinges upon Miccelli easily winning reelection, which Besegai is absolutely certain of, an odd thing to guarantee considering the race has already spilled over into a runoff (needless to say, Miccelli losing to his upstart challenger is the first of many things that go sideways for the gang). For the ill-fated job, Rory is partnered briefly with jumpy nitwit Scalvo (rapper-turned-actor Jack Harlow) and more permanently with the sardonic Cobby (Casey Affleck), who provides a running commentary on the myriad ways the whole situation is fucked six ways to Sunday.
This is at least the sixth time Damon and Affleck the younger have co-starred together — how does one quantify films like Interstellar and Oppenheimer, where the actors never actually share the same scene, anyway? — but this is the most the two actors have played directly off of one another since Gus Van Sant’s Gerry. (That film is similar to The Instigators insomuch as both are about two men who grow to resent one another yet are forced to travel together out of circumstance, and is dissimilar in pretty much every other respect.) Rory and Cobby are stunned to discover there’s almost none of the money they’ve been promised at the party, and, after a pathetic attempt to rob Miccelli and his staff of whatever cash and sundries they’ve got in their pockets, a shootout ensues where Scalvo takes a bullet in the head and Cobby lands a stray in the shoulder. Terrified neophyte Rory and the shit-talking-through-the-pain Cobby jump from hideout to hideout — most of which are just buildings owned by Cobby’s favorite bar owner — unaware they’re being hunted, both by Besegai’s crew and Miccelli’s personal attack dog, the on-the-take police detective Frank Toomey (Ving Rhames) who prowls the city in a steel-plated urban pacification vehicle. Also, as previously alluded to, Dr. Rivera gets caught up in the mix once Rory realizes that the M.D. at the end of her name isn’t ornamental.
A suicidal ex-soldier, a wise-ass crook, and the shrink compelled at “gunpoint” (although not really) to play doctor to both of them is a promising logline for a comedy; pity the film only gets about 25 minutes of material out of it before resetting so our characters can attempt to take down yet another score. But then that speaks to the overstuffed yet underbaked nature of the film’s screenplay. The script is credited to TV writer Chuck MacLean (City on a Hill) and Affleck, and it tends to wave off some pretty fundamental story issues in the interest of advancing the plot. For instance, why is Damon’s character, a civilian who’s so wet behind the ears he’s literally “taking notes on a criminal conspiracy” (the line was funnier the first time, when it was used on The Wire), being pulled into a stick-up job by the mob? Aside from a throwaway line about him being somebody’s cousin, no clue. Why does the entire plot hinge upon the mayor having to physically vacate his office literally the day after losing the election? (That’s simply not how elections work, not even in the case of a runoff.) Why is Dr. Rivera, who’d already been taken hostage once in the film, asked to put on a bulletproof vest and serve as a hostage negotiator for the film’s climax? Do they let any old therapist do this sort of highly dangerous work just because they raised their hand, or is it only limited to those who already have an intimate relationship with the suspects?
These are all the sorts of things that are easy enough to dismiss as nitpicks when a film is cooking, but The Instigators barely reaches boiling. It has the unfortunate habit of introducing characters portrayed by talented character actors and either losing track of them for long periods of time or just halfheartedly writing them out of the story (it’s never clear why Paul Walter Hauser shows up for 10 minutes of screentime here, for instance). Further, the film feels perpetually torn between being a noisy smash-em-up where characters careen stolen firetrucks into rows of parked cars and use exploding buildings as diversions, and a more low-key character piece about complicated male relationships in the vein of Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky, although it seems pretty clear which one Damon and Affleck thought they were making. Affleck in particular really leans into Cobby’s more irritating tendencies, treating sarcasm and an overarching dirtbag demeanor — the character is introduced coercing a small boy into blowing into a breathalyzer to unlock his motorcycle — as a security blanket. It’s all wiry bluster and emotional deflection when the character desperately wants for people to like him. There’s a cute runner in the film about Cobby attempting to get the stone-faced Rory to laugh at one of his many jokes, and the most winning stretch of the film involves Affleck turning his attentions to Chau, needling his hostage in a way that could almost be mistaken for a 13-year-old boy’s idea of flirting. It would be nice to report that Damon slides perfectly into the role of straight man — the De Niro to Affleck’s Grodin — but the character barely tracks from scene to scene, with the film uncertain whether Rory is green to the point of being a liability or the calm, cool, and collected adult in the room. (And The Instigators does so little with the suicidal ideation subplot that its inclusion feels almost insulting.)
The film was directed by Doug Liman who, in yet another reunion, previously worked with Damon on the first Jason Bourne film, The Bourne Identity. The Instigators is a comparatively more modest affair, what with its lack of globe-hopping or amnesiac government assassins, but there is a certain “winging it” kinship between the two films, particularly during a sequence where Damon has to maneuver a small vehicle at high speeds through a densely populated area, culminating in a multi-car pile up in the Central Artery. But here, as with most aspects of the film, there’s a real going-through-the-motions quality. It favors zippy competency and patness over invention (like nearly every chase in The Instigators, the driving scene eventually peters out as though the pursuers simply lose interest). Liman’s also far too fond of cutesy needle drops (Petula Clark’s “Downtown” for an escape headed… you know where; House of Pain’s “Jump Around” for a scene of ape-like Bostonians converging on a giant pile of money) and dodgy VFX work, with a handful of the film’s computer-assisted establishing shots looking like something out of a video game. Worst of all, The Instigators lacks the sort of jittery visual energy and relaxed comedic rhythms of the filmmaker’s earlier, shaggy-dog efforts. Instead, here it quite literally feels like Liman is just directing traffic.
DIRECTOR: Doug Liman; CAST: Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, Hong Chau, Paul Walter Hauser, Michael Stuhlbarg; DISTRIBUTOR: Apple TV+; IN THEATERS: August 2; STREAMING: August 9; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 41 min.
