‘The Instigators’ Review: Matt Damon and Casey Affleck Can’t Goose Doug Liman’s Limp Heist Movie

Is it just idiotic to keep hoping original made-for-streaming features might pass for real movies? Sure, there’s an occasional exception, but not Apple TV+’s The Instigators, even the generic title of which sounds like a dozen things you watched on planes and promptly forgot. The comedy-ish thriller about a pair of inept crime cohorts winging it after a botched heist boasts considerable resources, a proven director and a highly capable cast. But even an extended vehicular chase sequence involving half of Boston law enforcement and a trail of wreckage generates few sparks.

The Doug Liman film will play a week in theaters from August 2 before its global streaming premiere a week later. Which is one week more than the director’s last film — the silly but at least enjoyably pulpy Road House remake with Jake Gyllenhaal — got before dropping on Amazon.

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As fodder to shove into high rotation on subscriber algorithms, The Instigators will probably perform respectably thanks to the draw of headliners Matt Damon and Casey Affleck, the latter also serving as co-screenwriter. It’s not terrible but it’s far from great, instead landing in that dispiriting morass best identified as “passable entertainment,” designed to make critics grasp for new ways to say “Meh.”

It might have helped for a start if the script by City on a Hill creator Chuck MacLean and Affleck had committed to being either an action thriller, a buddy comedy or a gritty crime drama. (Ben Affleck, a producer here, aced that latter assignment with characters from a similar Boston blue-collar milieu in 2010’s terrific The Town.) Instead, the movie attempts to straddle the three genres and half-asses all of them. It tries for Carhartt Workwear realism but constantly trips over movie-ish contrivances. Not even three editors could iron out the tonal uncertainties.

The story opens with Damon as divorced, unemployed former Marine Rory, telling his concerned therapist, Dr. Rivera (Hong Chau), that he figured out his life wasn’t going to get better and decided if it still felt that way after a year he would cash in his ticket. That was a year ago. He just wants to see his son before taking that drastic step, but the $32,480 he owes in legal fees and child support stands in his way. Rory has tried everything. Except crime.

Somehow or other he finds himself on the crew of a supposedly easy in-and-out robbery to take place on a mayoral election night when the corrupt incumbent, Miccelli (Ron Perlman), is expected to be re-elected. Masterminded by small-time crook Mr. Besegai (Michael Stuhlbarg) with help from his associate Richie DeChico (Alfred Molina), who runs a bakery as a front, the plan is to collect the proceeds of the $500-ticket event and make a swift exit.

Naturally, there are variables, including a popular challenger, a refusal of one side to concede and a throng of security and other staff where only a handful was anticipated. One of those in attendance is a police chief in Miccelli’s pocket.

The main recruit to carry out the heist is Scalvo (Jack Harlow), who brings in Rory and ex-con Cobby (Affleck). When the plan unravels in the messiest way possible, Rory and Cobby find themselves fleeing together with a meager stash that includes something of great value to Miccelli. The escalating number of people on their tails includes Booch (Paul Walter Hauser), a bumbling stooge sent by Besegai to ice them, and Frank Toomey (Ving Rhames), a Special Opps chief also on the mayor’s payroll.

The comedy, such as it is, stems from the reluctant pairing of morose, methodical Rory with impulsive loudmouth Cobby, both of whom hail from working-class Quincy but otherwise have nothing in common. The two actors play off each other well enough, contrasting Damon’s caustic deadpan with Affleck’s devil-may-care flippancy. But the writing lacks the wit to milk the odd-couple dynamic for many real laughs.

It’s hard enough to buy that a guy like Rory, resigned to his despair, would be in therapy at all, but even harder once they rope in Dr. Rivera as a fake hostage and she keeps firing shrink-speak at her patient during a high-speed chase while her car is getting crumpled around them. Actors like Chau, Stuhlbarg and Molina deserve better than the thin characterizations this material provides.

Liman’s attempts to inject an offbeat edge include having the big chase set-piece accompanied by the swinging Petula Clark pop classic “Downtown” on the car stereo. But this is a drab-looking movie in which even the stabs at humor feel inauthentic, and rather than building tension, the climactic scenes involving an enraged Miccelli and his shifty lawyer (Toby Jones) just drag on.

It’s sad to think this is the director who once gave us robustly entertaining commercial fare like The Bourne Identity, Mr. & Mrs. Smith and Edge of Tomorrow. Then again, the intervening years have yielded the Tom Holland dystopian sci-fi Chaos Walking and the pandemic crime rom-com Locked Down, with Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor. If you’ve never heard of those films, there’s a reason. The same fate probably awaits The Instigators.