Much of The Instigators feels a little lost somewhere between Ocean’s Eleven and The Town, but the movie—starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck as desperate strangers who get paired up for an ill-fated heist in Boston—has enough camaraderie between the leads, as well as a sharply comic supporting turn from Hong Chau, to make for a breezy crime farce. There’s political bite too. The target of the heist is the corrupt mayor (Ron Perlman), who refuses to leave City Hall after losing a run-off election (partly out of pride, but mostly because he’s trying to buy time to move cash and other evidence from his massive office safe). As things spiral out of control and our anti-heroes find themselves on the run, I also appreciated the way law enforcement is depicted as over-staffed, over-armed, and over-eager. (Ving Rhames’s Special Operations officer tooling around in a behemoth built for Iraq is spot-on.) Written by Affleck and Chuck MacLean and directed by Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity, Edge of Tomorrow), whose camera frequently can’t decide exactly where it wants to be in any given scene.
(8/7/2024)
