An ex-Marine and an ex-con — thieves, the both of them — walk into a high security vault and discover that the joke is on them. Played by Matt Damon and Casey Affleck, Rory and Cobby aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed, but they sort of know this already. They might as well have been hired for the job — robbing a corrupt politician on the eve of election results — because they look like the kind of dudes that work for Danny Ocean. Out on Apple, The Instigators has none of the slick thrills of Steven Soderbergh’s hit trilogy; directed by the journeyman Doug Liman, the heist-comedy is so middle-of-the-road that every fork that it encounters automatically has the upper hand.
Perhaps the only reason why Ben Affleck didn’t star opposite his childhood buddy is because he didn’t want to play another alcoholic on screen, considering his well-documented personal struggles. This is the more innocent explanation for why Liman didn’t go down the obvious casting route, because the alternative — that The Instigators is an orchestrated effort to un-cancel Casey after some grave sexual harassment allegations — is decidedly more sinister. For a movie that relies this heavily on the chemistry of its two leads, casting Damon and the only Affleck to have an acting Oscar isn’t exactly a risky bet; at least not as risky as the one Michael Stuhlbarg’s character makes on Rory and Cobby.
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Matt Damon and Casey Affleck in a still from The Instigators. (Photo: Apple TV+)
Stuhlbarg plays a low-level Boston goon who operates a sloppy crime ring from behind a bakery counter. He’s no Frank Costello from The Departed, or even Pete Poslethwaite’s character from The Town. The fact that he decides to go with a duo as ill-equipped as Rory and Cobby is a sign of his ineptitude as a criminal. He’s obviously biting off more than he can chew, but he knows that Rory and Cobby have no choice but to accept his proposal to rob a Trumpian mayoral candidate (played by Ron Perlman) for $300,000 a day before the election results are announced.
Among the film’s more curious creative decisions is to not reveal the protagonists’ personal motivations to accept the job. And yet, it is able to elicit a degree of empathy for them. This is an objectively difficult narrative trick to pull off, because beyond a point, why would anybody root for thieves? In this case, however, key character details are enough to wrangle us to their side. We’re told that Cobby took the fall for a crime he didn’t commit, and spent 18 months in prison while the actual culprits — ostensibly his friends — roamed free. The suicidal Rory, on the other hand, is in therapy. He declares that he doesn’t need a penny more than $32,400, which is enough to let us, the audience, know that he’s coming from a pure place. It almost doesn’t matter what he needs the cash for. The obvious obnoxiousness of their mark, a stand-in for Donald Trump, also helps tip the scales in their favour.
But from the very first second, things don’t work out like they’d (inadequately) planned. They’d miscalculated every tiny detail, from the number of people that would be present at the venue, to the amount of cash that they’d find in the vault. It’s practically empty when they show up, because they’d also mistimed the robbery. “Do you have a smaller bag,” the guard asks Cobby after being commanded to empty the vault’s contents. Things only spiral from there; a third robber — played by the rapper Jack Harlow of all people; perhaps a nod to Post Malone’s casting in Guy Ritchie’s bank robber movie Wrath of Man — shoots a high-ranking police officer and promptly dies himself.
On the run, Rory and Cobby find themselves bantering and bonding as the corrupt mayor hires a menacing detective to track them down. Played by Ving Rhames — The Instigators is filled to the gills with an overqualified supporting cast — this man isn’t afraid to go off-the-books, as he tracks them down one thinly veiled threat at a time. Hong Chau plays Rory’s therapist, who becomes closely intertwined in the plot during the second act. Alfred Molina and Toby Jones, by the way, show up for one-scene roles, proving once again that if Apple’s pockets were any deeper, James Cameron would probably plan an expedition to explore them.
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Hong Chau, Casey Affleck, and Matt Damon in a still from The Instigators. (Photo: Apple TV+)
It’s like every first choice on Liman’s list said yes, and admittedly, the effect of this handsome spending cannot be underestimated. Combined with cinematographer Henry Braham’s characteristically evocative visuals, the all-star cast gives The Instigators the gloss and sheen of something more important than a disposable Apple TV+ movie. Despite what the ridiculously cheap-looking poster might suggest, The Instigators feels expensive, with multiple real locations, hordes of extras when they’re required, and obvious cooperation from the city of Boston, which lent not only its streets to the production, but also its fire trucks and cop cars.
Liman knows his way around a populist entertainer — this is second film of the year, after the mildly mischievous Road House — but his commentary often gets buried under the superficial thrills. The political class will always prey on the working class; this much we know, and in the case of movies like The Instigators, this is about as much as we need to know.
The Instigators
Director – Doug Liman
Cast – Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, Hong Chau, Ron Perlman, Michael Stuhlbarg, Alfred Molina, Paul Walter Hauser, Ving Rhames, Toby Jones, Jack Harlow
Rating – 3/5
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