Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Doug Liman
Starring: Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, Hong Chau, Ving
Rhames, Michael Stuhlbarg, Paul Walter Hauser, Alfred Molina, Toby Jones, Jack
Harlow, Ron Perlman
I'm beginning to suspect a lot of filmmakers take working for a
streaming service as seriously as a schoolboy takes the homework
assigned by a substitute teacher. Making movies for a streamer is the
modern equivalent of churning out exploitation movies for moguls like
Roger Corman and Charles Band; the streamer doesn't care about quality,
it just needs a piece of content to stick on its homepage for a couple
of days until subscribers get bored and look to another fresh piece of
content. For an up and coming filmmaker this can be viewed as an
opportunity to pour their heart and soul into a piece of work, just as
the likes of Scorsese, Coppola, Demme et al did for Corman back in the
day. But for a jaded journeyman like Doug Liman, who seems
to have stopped caring about quality (maybe making something as good
as Edge of Tomorrow and seeing it flop will do that to you), it's simply a chance to
make a quick buck without putting in the sort of work a mainstream
studio might expect.
The Instigators, Liman's new film for Apple TV+, arrives just five months after the remake of Road House he knocked out for Amazon. Like that remake, The Instigators is barely a movie, more a collection of scenes and gags thrown
together with all the enthusiasm of a once-revered Austrian émigré
filmmaker helming a Three Stooges short in 1959.
Matt Damon teams up not with Ben but Casey Affleck this time. The former plays Rory, an ex-marine whose life has
fallen apart to the point where he only sees two logical choices: he can
top himself or he can turn to crime to pay off the considerable sum he
owes his ex-wife in alimony and child support. He opts for the latter,
teaming up with alcoholic ex-con Cobby (Ben Affleck) to steal the
money raised by a party thrown by Boston Mayor Joseph Miccelli (Ron Perlman) on election night. Of course, the heist goes wrong, leaving Rory and
Cobby on the run from a combination of the mobsters that employed them
(played by Michael Stuhlbarg and Alfred Molina) and a ruthless crooked cop (Ving Rhames) enlisted by the mayor
to retrieve a locket on which is engraved a series of numbers.
This is first-draft filmmaking at its worst. It opens in what feels like
media res, throwing us right into the plot without any time to get to know
the protagonists, as though some cigar-chewin' producer tore off the first
15 pages of the script and ordered Liman to "get to the tits kid" (of
course, this being 2024, there are no tits). This means we spend much of
the movie trying to get a handle on who exactly Rory and Cobby are, but it
proves a futile endeavour as they have all the depth of storefront
mannequins. It's a classic "buddy" setup, which is something we just
doesn't get enough of today, but the film can't decide which of the two is
the straight man and which is the comic foil (think Robert De Niro and
Sean Penn in Neil Jordan's awful We're No Angels remake).
Halfway through, a possible straight man is added in the form of Rory's
psychiatrist Donna (Hong Chau), who becomes a willing accomplice
when her medical skills are required to patch up a bullet wound. But the
film does nothing with this potentially fun dynamic between the uptight
doc and the two bumbling criminals, and Donna is set loose after 20
minutes anyway. Other characters are introduced in a manner that suggests
they're set to paly a big role in the narrative, only for the script
(which Affleck penned with Chuck Maclean) to seemingly forget
they were ever there in the first place. Some of the characterisation is
downright baffling, especially the mobsters played by Stuhlbarg and
Molina.
There's a car chase here that's so badly executed it's impossible to
believe it's from the director of The Bourne Identity, a grim example of how far standards have plummeted in the streaming
era. The digital backdrops of every scene set inside a vehicle are of a
quality even Tommy Wiseau wouldn't accept. The script is filled with the
most predictable quips imaginable, as though AI was enlisted to write a
bickering buddy comedy. But The Instigators' biggest problem is its complete lack of stakes. Neither of the two
protagonists seem to care whether they get caught or killed. Rory is
suicidal from the off and Cobby just treats the whole thing like one big
joke, which makes for a distinct lack of jeopardy. If they don't care, why
should we?
The Instigators is on Apple TV+
from August 9th.
