Summary
Matt Damon and Casey Affleck boast great chemistry in Apple TV+’s laidback and very funny caper The Instigators.
There isn’t much to The Instigators. It’s a surface-level crime caper with a forgettable plot, few big moments, and largely one-note characters. And yet I had a blast with the Apple TV+ film for a single reason – it’s funny.
Lots of movies are funny, of course, but few are funny as effortlessly and consistently as this one, without having to resort to slapstick. The script – co-written by co-star Casey Affleck – is incredibly dense with well-timed one-liners that make every scene, even the ones wherein very little is happening, quite a pleasure.
A Boston-set flick starring Matt Damon alongside an Affleck would ordinarily involve Ben, with whom Damon wrote my favorite film of all time, Good Will Hunting. Casey provides a different dynamic; less earnest and powerful, maybe, but a lot funnier and lighter.
That’s the charm of The Instigators. It’s a laidback caper that doesn’t take itself very seriously and is just designed to entertain. Too few movies do that these days. They all want to be too new or too serious or too clever or too long. The Instigators is content to coast along on its stars’ chemistry and be a generally good time.
Damon plays Rory, an ex-Marine mechanic who, as he explains to his therapist Dr. Donna Rivera (Hong Chau), has kind of put an expiration date on his life. Since things don’t seem to be getting better for him – he’s being crushed under a mountain of child-support debt and has destroyed his relationships with his son and ex-wife – he’s debating just ending them for good.
This is how Rory ends up in a scheme to defraud the incumbent mayor Miccelli (Ron Perlman) with ex-con Cobby (Affleck) and career-criminal Scalvo (rapper Jack Harlow). The trio are working for Michael Stuhlbarg and Alfred Molina, with supporting roles for Toby Jones, Paul Walter Hauser, and Ving Rhames, almost like The Instigators is showing off how good of a cast it can assemble for a relatively throwaway movie.
Director Doug Liman does something fairly interesting with the structure, though. Initially, it fronts like it’s going to be an Ocean’s-style caper, replete with multiple levels of planning and then several escalating mishaps that turn out to have all been intentional in the end. But the “big job” takes place pretty much straight away and is a disaster, so the rest of the movie finds Rory and Cobby on the run with Donna as their willing hostage.
The Instigators | Image via Apple TV+
On that level, The Instigators is more of a road trip buddy-comedy than a heist or an action thriller, which is a fun deviation from expectations. It must be said that there’s never enough tension built up for any of this to matter – even the Ving Rhames character, a dangerous-looking fixer-type, never does anything all that dangerous – but I didn’t mind in the end. Each new temporary safehouse or villain is just an excuse for more quips.
You can feel the influences coming from all over the place. Soderbergh is the obvious one but some of the longer, more tangled debates – often about nothing, or at least nothing important – evoke Tarantino. Don’t get the wrong impression, of course, as The Instigators isn’t in the same class as the better work of either of those two, but it isn’t trying to be either. The nods are fun homage and nothing more; just an excuse for Affleck’s surprisingly great comedic timing to steal the show.
If you had to quibble, and I do, the commitment to vibes can lead to a bit of a disconnect between what we’re seeing and what we’re told we’re seeing. I never got the sense, for instance, that Rory was a man on the brink of suicide. He mostly seemed utterly unconcerned with his predicament, and Affleck’s constant banter and outright refusal to take anything seriously means it’s difficult to buy into the idea that he’s in danger or is willing to do anything not to return to prison.
For the most part, I don’t think this detracts a great deal from The Instigators since it’s so obviously intended to be a vehicle for Damon and Affleck’s chemistry, which has never shone through before the way it does here in large part because the movies they have both starred in together kept them quite separate. Anyone who doesn’t buy into this central relationship of bickering Bostonians, though, will find the movie incredibly trying incredibly quickly, so mileage may vary.
