THE RIP is Netflix’s new Gritty Cop Thriller (G.C.T.) written and directed by Joe Carnahan (THE A-TEAM, THE GREY, BOSS LEVEL), sharing story credit with Michael McGrale (additional literary material, THE EXPENDABLES 4). It’s a pretty good movie if you enjoy Carnahan’s more serious minded work and/or if you’re interested in the gimmick of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon reuniting as best buddies but in a movie where they’re Gritty Cops so they’re each afraid the other is corrupt and is gonna stab them in the back. There is friendship but also yelling, guns, etc.

It all starts with the prologue death of Captain Jackie Velez (Lina Esco, LONDON) of the Miami-Dade PD. She seems to be Onto Something Big when she gets ambushed by masked men. It’s a good shoot out scene, of the post-HEAT loud and quasi-realistic variety. I like the detail that she’s having trouble calling for help because she got some of her blood on her phone screen. This is the incident that sends FBI agents played by Scott Adkins (X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE) and Daisuke Tsuji (Ghost of Tsushima video game) in to question the members of Jackie’s elite Tactical Narcotics Team (TNT), suggesting they might have been involved.

Detective Sergeant JD Byrne (Ben Affleck, SMOKIN’ ACES) is especially macho and belligerent under questioning, as well as cagey about his relationship with Jackie. He is very offended by the implication that his team might be dirty, while also whining about another team that got shut down for being dirty, and making it very much seem like he or his team are dirty. It’s funny to see him arguing with Adkins, whose character in THE BROTHERS GRIMSBY was made fun of as “Ukrainian Ben Affleck.” This is a non-kicking role for Adkins and he’s only in a couple scenes, but he’s good in it, it’s the type of character he’s really good at (except not Russian).

Lieutenant Dane Dumars (Matt Damon, THE GREAT WALL) has assumed leadership of the team, which also includes detectives Mike Ro (Steven Yeun, OKJA), Numa Baptiste (Teyana Taylor, ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER), and Lolo Salazar (Catalina Sandino Morena, BALLERINA: FROM THE WORLD OF JOHN WICK). At the end of their shift they hang out in the parking lot drinking, barbecuing, playing dominoes, doing donuts with their sports cars and front wheelies on their motorcycles. Some of their DEA agent buddies, Nix (Kyle Chandler, FIRST MAN) and Reyes (Jose Pablo Cantillo, REDBELT), stop by in a tank and stand around with their thumbs hooked into their kevlar vests as they bust each others’ balls and gossip about the murder investigation. I think this is definitely in that category with BACKDRAFT and BLOWN AWAY, movies absolutely in awe of macho guys in a stressful job bonding after work. But I think there’s also a hint of THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS, which I mean as a compliment.

Dane comes out and says he got “a crime stopper tip” about a money stash in a house in Hialeah. Just a routine “rip” (confiscation), he says. He kinda acts like he doesn’t need everybody as long as Lolo brings Wilbur the money sniffing dog, but the whole team sighs and mans or womans up, gets in their cool cars and they drive to the house like Autobots. It’s Friday, the sun’ll be down before long and they thought the weekend had started, but what the hell, they’re TNT, this is how they roll.

The house was owned by an old lady who died recently. Her granddaughter Desi (Sasha Calle, Supergirl in THE FLASH) answers the door and gets sort of bowled over, so the cops come inside and start searching. They find an empty attic and then a secret compartment and holy shit this is a way bigger stash than expected. Maybe 14 barrels filled with cash? Suddenly they’re a huge target, but Dane insists they follow procedure and count all the money on site. But also he keeps coming up with reasons not to call the major yet.

It’s such an effective setup for a thriller, with rising tensions and lots of good pay offs. As soon as they realize how much money this is they start getting worried about either the cartel who it belongs to or a corrupt squad of police coming after them. Dane confiscates everyone’s phones so that no word will get out, which doesn’t go over well. Mike sneaks off and makes a call on a hidden burner phone, and like everyone’s behavior through much of this movie it can be read different ways. He suspects Dane wants to steal the money, but is he tipping off internal affairs, or someone who also wants to steal the money? Is Dane telling everyone different things because he’s a fucking liar, or because he’s testing them? We don’t know, and neither does his best friend, who starts to get very suspicious.

So it’s a paranoid thriller, and a siege movie. Guns do come out. Desi is caught in the middle, trying to figure out if there’s anyone she can trust to help her. There are some good Oh Shit It’s On moments, like when Dane and Byrne have a weird encounter with two local patrolmen out front, talk about it for a minute and suddenly change modes. “All right, let’s get the rifles, vest up, get a vest on the dog…”

Or when they realize a light in the distance is not flickering because it’s going out, but because it’s Morse code.

It’s a strong ensemble, obviously. And man, Damon is so good at this type of lead, the guy who’s so smart and capable and kind of wryly funny and sometimes righteously furious, ready to spit out a quick-witted speech carefully punctuated with Bostonian curses. And it’s an interesting spin to combine that with “Can we trust this guy?” We never had to worry if Good Will Hunting or Jason Bourne or The Martian were up to something bad. And behind Ben Affleck’s back? How could he? So this is a fun time.

It’s clear that most people into this type of movie agree that “THE RIP rips,” and I can’t deny it. But for me – and maybe it’s just today, maybe it wouldn’t’ve happened another time – it was one of those movies that deflates as soon as it reveals the solution to the mystery. Not because it turns kinda MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE in the complicated reveals, or because there’s a big Hollywood speeding-cars-and-machine-guns finale. Those things are fine. But part of what was so compelling about the story for me is that in its suspenseful paranoia it happens to paint a convincing portrait of policing as some kind of mission creep beyond anyone doing anything good for society, to a bunch of heavily armed gangs (most of them state sanctioned) fighting over treasure. They call each other snitches, joke about being called corrupt, it’s noted that police unions can get dirty cops re-assigned. Everyone suspects everyone, but we don’t know if they suspect them of being dirty or not dirty. They could be working with other cops to steal the money, working with the cartel to protect the money, they could be just now for the first time deciding to steal money. We’re with Desi trying to figure out if even one of these people will help her stay alive.

That feels very true, very modern, but when all is said and done it’s the same old thing (non-specific spoiler): two major characters are traitors, one gets outed and then cranks up the mega dial like when a Ghostface is unmasked in a SCREAM movie. It’s not everybody, it’s not systemic, it’s these damn bad apples. Good thing they would never spoil the bunch. Everybody else is a god damn angel, watching the informant and the FBI brother get rich off the case while they just go home wounded and tired and feeling so proud of a job well done. The greatest among us. God bless America.

Maybe I should’ve known it would be that when it said “INSPIRED BY TRUE EVENTS.” According to Forbes Damon’s character is based on a Miami-Dade County Sheriff on a real Tactical Narcotics Team who found $20 million hidden in a wall during a raid. Carnahan is close friends with the real guy, who was an advisor on COPSHOP, and wanted to glorify him in a movie to help him with his grief after his son died of cancer. The real homeowner was an old man making millions selling gardening equipment to Cuban pot growers, because weed is still illegal in Florida. (Obviously you gotta change it to cartels to make it scary.) The dirty cops trying to steal the money are not real, at least not in this case. Just fictional movie villains for the good guys to defeat.

Carnahan told Forbes “There’s not enough stories like that, where they do the right thing.” But of course, the vast majority of cop movies are about the cops that do the right thing, or the wrong thing that we’re supposed to agree with, because sometimes it’s necessary, we’re told. They’re made by directors who, while maybe not personal friends with their subjects, have worked closely with police consultants and become enamored of the macho police culture. So they have a good view of the procedural details they think are cool, and a good reason not to step back and look at it from a distance where they might be tempted to measure the heroism against the harms of policing.

So this is an entertaining thriller, but for me personally these days you gotta do something more than that with the realistic-ish cop movie. It’s one thing with a cartoonish neo-western like COPSHOP, but this seems like we’re supposed to believe it. I have many friends who can mentally separate movies like this from the realities of modern life and enjoy them, but I can’t always pull it off. In 2026 to still be making these movies that get so swaggery about depicting cop attitudes and cop procedure and cop lingo (even in the title!) but only in the service of the same old fashioned “man, it’s hard to be a cop, brings a tear to my eye, I salute you, good sir!” routine… it feels tone deaf. Even a little childish. Like TOY STORY’s Andy still loving Woody’s Round Up. Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys.

Otherwise though, good movie.