Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are at the stage in their careers where they appear to be doing movies together almost entirely so it can be an excuse to hang out with one another. Take the new trailer we have for Netflix’s cops-turned-robbers throwback thriller, The Rip. Directed by Joe Carnahan of Smokin’ Aces and The Grey fame, it appears to be a pretty basic action-adjacent programmer of the kind that, say, Pacino and De Niro would’ve made together 20 years ago (so not Heat).
Which is to say, it is being marketed, not un-persuasively, on the appeal of watching Affleck and Damon working together again. Hey, it worked in the winsome Nike meets MJ movie, Air, and fueled what is probably Ridley Scott’s most underrated historical epic, The Last Duel. Also like that latter movie, a lot of The Rip seems to be about these famously loving buddies playing guys who don’t like each other.
In the case of The Rip, this comes courtesy of the pair being over-seasoned and world-weary Miami detectives who discover a bag full of money stashed in a derelict house. Inevitably loyalties start to stray, and an impressive supporting cast that includes Steve Yeun, Sasha Calle, and awards season-frontrunner Teyana Taylor will most assuredly find themselves caught in the middle. Still, the heart of the marketing seems entirely based around watching Affleck and Damon onscreen together again, this time as rivals turned enemies faster than you can say The Treasure of Sierra Madre.
And we’ll be honest that sounds like a lot of fun. However, as fans of both actors and their rare Hollywood story of lasting friendship and collaboration, we cannot help but wonder if it isn’t time for the pair to do another movie where they’re buddies onscreen again? Famously, they won their Original Screenplay Oscar together for co-authoring Good Will Hunting, a movie in which they starred as hardknock Boston buds who were ride or die until Affleck’s character told Will Hunting to literally ride on without him.
