The Rip Review: Matt Damon And Ben Affleck's Netflix Thriller Falls Short Of Its Potential

January signals the arrival of two of my favorite pop culture events of the year. The first is Hollywood dump month, where the studios release their trashiest, most likely to be critically reviled movies of their calendar year; bottom of the barrel delights that go down extraordinarily well after months of prestige Oscar hopefuls. The other, more recent annual event is the return of both U.S. and U.K. editions of "The Traitors," the addictive reality TV whodunnit where either minor celebrities (in the U.S. version) or eccentric members of the public (in the superior U.K. series) compete to "banish" players they believe are secretly conspiring to take the prize money for themselves. It's a month-long camp extravaganza of bitching and backstabbing, and the perfect tonic for the miserable winter months.

On paper, "The Rip," the new straight-to-Netflix vehicle from action auteur Joe Carnahan, appears to be a marriage made in dump month heaven; a trashy thriller where a team of cops all investigate who is the traitor on their team, attempting to seize a recovered $19 million drug payment for themselves. Unfortunately, "The Rip" is a couple of twists too short of being the satisfying crime procedural it aspires to be, and the twists it does have are telegraphed as highly as the reality series, where the viewer is always clued in on who the villains are at any given time. Even with that mechanic stripped from proceedings, "The Rip" will be glaringly, infuriatingly obvious even to an audience hoping for a brain dead, meat head thrill ride.

The day after one of their colleagues is killed on the job, Miami police Lieutenant Dane Dumars (Matt Damon) gets a suspicious text informing him that a huge stash of money in the hundreds of thousands is being held in an unassuming suburban home in the city outskirts. He's a model cop, to the point of extreme self-doubt about his profession, with tattoos on his hands reminding himself he's one of the good guys — but that doesn't stop his co-workers — including Detective Sergeant JD Byrne (Ben Affleck), Detective Mike Ro (Steven Yeun), and Detective Numa Baptiste (Teyana Taylor) — from frequently joking that he's the most crooked cop in a department notorious for bad apples.

Lieutenant Dane — try not reading that back to yourself in a Forrest Gump voice — leads the team after hours to this "rip," assuming it'll be a quick and easy job recovering and reporting. But after Dane has told people different monetary amounts will be recovered, suspicions start rising when $19 million is found stashed behind a wall in the attic belonging to Desi ("The Flash" star Sasha Calle) who only moved there a couple of months earlier, and claims to have never even gone to see what's up there. Suddenly, the whole gang gets suspicious that they're withholding information from each other to try take a significant amount of the cash for themselves off the books. This is a crooked department — the suspicions aren't unfounded.

Although only partially a murder mystery, with the death that proceeded the narrative lingering around in the background, "The Rip" has the same issue that any movie in the genre stacked with A-listers has; the casting alone hints too heavily at who is the culprit, and anything pointing elsewhere is nothing more than a red herring. Damon and Affleck are already two overqualified leads for a movie set almost entirely on a near-empty cul-de-sac, where there's just a couple of shootouts to punctuate the absence of civilization surrounding the stash house. But both still make sense working in the action genre, which typically doesn't have many vehicles designed around two male leads, as opposed to ensembles or lone wolves; it's natural both would gravitate toward a stripped-back affair that gives them a chance to be macho, competent, and just generally shoot the s**t with each other. I have no doubt that the cast had a lot of fun on set making this one; it's probably why they were too distracted to realize this project was a little too undercooked.

Instead, it's the supporting cast whose presence really distracts, considering the scaled-back nature of the story. Oscar nominee and Emmy winner Steven Yeun has unfortunately still taken on many thankless roles since "Minari" and "Beef" edged him closer to the A-list; the natural gravitas that comes with hiring him means it's hard for his character to evade suspicion for long, as why would an actor of his stature slum it in a straight-to-streaming vehicle like this, playing second fiddle to two more dominant A-listers? There are fewer question marks around Teyana Taylor's character, largely because this was shot prior to "One Battle After Another" catapulting her into the Oscar conversation — this is a movie where the only suspects are the ones with familiar faces (see also: the lurking background presence of Kyle Chandler as a rival DEA agent circling the team), and this went into production too prematurely for her to be counted as one.

Even when the self-contained nature of the story is taken into account, there are still far too few twists to sustain the intensity of the drama. The movie is stylized like a chamber murder mystery, with all the suspects forced into close proximity, not knowing who to trust, or whether one of their close friends is working behind their backs; unfortunately, it reveals its hand far too soon to deliver on the simple delights that the genre twist promises. Of course, this isn't a movie for murder mystery aficionados, but the action junkies demanding the Netflix algorithm produces something with enough adrenaline that can go down nicely with a pizza and a few small beers. Luckily, Joe Carnahan is a genre director skilled enough that he can make a thriller limited by its location zip along, never dragging its heels even when the constraints are so clear onscreen. It's far from his best work — that will still be his hilariously mis-marketed, surprisingly existential Liam Neeson drama "The Grey" — but it's further proof he's a safe pair of hands. He may be a journeyman filmmaker, but few directors of his weight class could make something so flimsy and anticlimactic as watchable as he can.

"The Rip" will be lost to the algorithm within weeks, and if it does become a success, it will still be forgotten by all those who watched it. It's perfectly serviceable, never less than watchable, but lacking in anything special that could live up to its twisty potential.

"The Rip" lands on Netflix on January 19.