Matt Damon’s ‘The Instigators’ Is Another Streaming Movie Flop

Despite often featuring top talent in front of and behind the camera, a surprising number of streaming films look, sound, and feel second-rate — a group that now includes The instigators.

Directed by Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity, Edge of tomorrowthe recent Road House remake), starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck alongside a who’s who of illustrious supporting actors, this Apple TV+ film — which will hit theaters for a week on August 2 before debuting online on August 9 — is a lackluster approximation of Eddie Coyle’s Friends through Out of sightdevoid of the comic energy it craves and, it turns out, desperately needs. All it provokes is frustration at its lethargic unoriginality.

The instigators is generic in almost every way, from the title (which has nothing to do with the plot), to the criminal antics, to the green “33” shirt (without the name “Bird”) hanging in a downtown Boston office.

Written by Affleck and Chuck Maclean, the film certainly wastes no time in laborious setup. Crime boss Mr. Besegai (Michael Stuhlbarg) is ready to pull off a once-in-a-lifetime score, but has no one to do it. The best he can do is force incompetent thug Scalvo (Jack Harlow) to find some gangsters to pull off his heist.

The guys he hires are far from seasoned criminals. Cobby (Affleck) is an ex-con who went to prison after being blamed for a botched job, and now spends his days finding anyone—children included—who will blow into the breathalyzer that will allow him to ride his motorcycle to his favorite dive bar. Rory (Damon), on the other hand, is an ex-Marine who tells his VA hospital therapist, Dr. Donna Rivera (Hong Chau), that he’s on the verge of suicide, and who signs up for the job because he needs exactly $32,480.

Rory and Cobby don’t know each other and can’t get along, the former a reserved, serious and awkward rookie and the latter a loud, irresponsible recidivist. This dynamic should make for some hilariously abrasive jokes, but The instigators fails to provoke a laugh. There’s nothing funny about Cobby’s stream of nonsense or Rory’s attempts to act tough and ruthless during their daring operation, largely because neither character is brutally defined; instead, they feel like vague photocopies of archetypes, drained of any vibrant color.

While this is partly due to Damon and Affleck’s inaction, it’s mostly the fault of a screenplay that repeatedly drags on too long. Midnight Run-esque buddy comedy with hostility and only comes up with lukewarm sarcasm and weak hostility.

Besegai hires Rory and Cobby (along with Scalvo) to rob Boston’s incumbent mayor, Miccelli (Ron Perlman), on the night he’s up for re-election. The idea is that Miccelli is so insanely corrupt that his vault is overflowing with bribes. In theory, this is a solid plan, but from the moment Rory and Cobby arrive at the party, things go awry, culminating in a shootout that leaves Scalvo dead and Rory and Cobby on the run.

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With no loot, they are hunted down by everyone involved. The instigatorsfrom Mayor Miccelli – who tasks tough detective Frank Toomey (Ving Rhames) with tracking down a coveted gold bracelet the duo stole from him – to Besegai, who orders his right-hand man Richie Dechico (Alfred Molina) to enlist killer Booch (Paul Walter Hauser) to collect the bounty and kill the bumbling pair.

Unfortunately, these impressive components amount to simply dull clowning, with Liman’s flat direction sabotaging even the rare moments that have potential for mirth. Liman and cinematographer Henry Braham film everything with a straightforward banality that goes hand in hand with Affleck and Damon’s witty remarks, and the action isn’t enlivened by the occasional cutesy needle drop.

Worse still, so many actors are wasted on bland, empty roles. Perlman bellows as the unethical mayor, Toby Jones flits about as his assistant, Rhames acts tough as the police for hire, and Stuhlbarg rants and curses (and wears a big fur coat) as the underworld boss who gets screwed by his employees. Molina, meanwhile, is somehow given less to do as Richie, a character so inconsequential (he’s a baker who works for Besegai, and, uh, that’s it) that it feels as if his part was drastically cut in post-production—a fate that apparently befell Hauser’s Booch, who similarly quickly disappears from the film.

Matt Damon and Casey Affleck in The Instigators. — Matt Damon and Casey Affleck

Apple TV+

The instigatorsThe lack of imagination is epitomized by an early scene in which Rory writes down Scalvo’s instructions, prompting the gangster to ask in exasperation, “Are you taking notes on a criminal fucking plot?” — an incident lifted almost entirely from The wire.

To evade their murderous pursuers, Rory and Cobby venture to the beach and, after a gunshot wound, to Donna’s office, whom they take hostage (with her consent) so she can treat the wound medically. Donna’s presence initiates many quasi-therapeutic conversations between the trio, and also causes Cobby to swoon, though any romantic sparks are snuffed out by the material’s lifeless dialogue. So too is any coherent sense of these protagonists’ underlying issues and motivations, which all come across as mere screenwriting techniques.

Damon and Affleck have authentic Boston accents and The instigators appears to have been shot on location in their hometown, but unlike Ben Affleck, he did so with The cityLiman never quite captures the city’s unique character. On paper, his latest film has all the elements needed for a sharp, suspenseful joke, but he fails to put them together in an engaging, let alone exciting, way.

Rory and Cobby embark on several pseudo-crazy exploits, including robbing the mayor again in order to give Rory his money—which he wants for child support-related expenses that are straining his relationship with his son—and to help the two clear their names. As with everything in this weighty affair, what sounds crazy on paper proves to be mundane and tiresome in execution, resulting in another in what has become an increasingly long line of half-hearted, controversial streaming films.