The Rip Review: A Gritty Netflix Cop Thriller Directed by Joe Carnahan
Writer-director Joe Carnahan takes a bow to the legendary Michael Mann in his latest Netflix cop thriller, 'The Rip'. From the foreboding Miami nightscapes to Clinton Shorter's pulsating synth score, the film echoes the tense atmosphere of Mann's classics like 'Thief' and 'Heat'. But Carnahan's neo-noir breakthrough, 'Narc', and his own foundation in the genre, ensure that 'The Rip' is not merely a derivative work. With an ace cast led by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, who produced under their Artists Equity banner, the film offers an entertaining watch.
Inspired by true events, the film opens with a prologue featuring Miami-Dade narcotics division captain Jackie Velez (Lina Esco) speeding through a rainy night to calm a distressed woman. Before she can reach the woman, Velez is shot and killed by two men in ski masks. She manages to send a quick text before disposing of her burner phone.
The action shifts to police headquarters, where a series of interrogations is underway. Lt. Dane Dumars (Damon), promoted to fill Velez's spot, urges his chief, Major Thom Vallejo (Nestor Carbonell), to let his team take charge of the case. However, Vallejo, struggling with budget cuts and corruption allegations, defers to the Feds.
Dane's suspicions are raised by the low-key internal investigation into a cop killing, with no task force assigned. This comes as the Violent Criminal Apprehension Team has been shut down, with further job cuts threatened. Dane's old friend and second in command, Det. Sgt. J.D. Byrne (Affleck), shares his suspicions, defending against insinuations from the Feds that a dirty cop might have been behind Velez's murder.
Carnahan and editor Kevin Hale keep the audience on their toes, piecing together fragments of background information as they intercut among various interrogations. The Feds also question the rest of the Tactical Narcotics Team: detectives Mike Ro (Steven Yeun), Numa Baptiste (Teyana Taylor), and Lolo Salazar (Catalina Sandino Moreno).
Later, while the team unwinds at the end of a shift, Dane shares news of a crime-stopper tip about a cartel stash house in neighboring Hialeah. Despite disgruntlement about a freeze on overtime pay, he musters his colleagues to go investigate.
The sniffer dog handled by Lolo starts barking up a storm even before they knock on the door. He then bolts up the stairs as soon as they enter, heading for an attic, which is pristine and empty. The sole occupant is a young woman named Desi (Sasha Calle), who claims the house belonged to her recently deceased grandmother and says she has never even been in the attic. But once the officers smash through a false wall and find $20 million in cash, her innocence seems a stretch.
That elaborate setup is about as far as a reviewer can go without wading into spoiler territory. But one key factor worth knowing is that Miami-Dade police procedure requires a full count of cash seized from stash houses before the officers leave the scene. This allows time for suspicions to fester and loyalties to be tested, as the amount mentioned on the alleged crime-stopper tip keeps changing, and Dane remains reluctant to phone in their findings to the major.
Threatening anonymous calls give them a half-hour to take a cut of the millions and get out of there before people start dying. Desi, handcuffed to a chair, reveals what she knows about the other people who make intermittent use of the house.
Two shady-looking cops in a Hialeah patrol car asking questions raises the temperature, as does what appears to be a widening rift between Dane and J.D. Tensions escalate among the team, even before a hailstorm of bullets rains down on them, wounding Lolo; a cartel member is spotted signaling from a nearby house; and former cop turned DEA officer Matty Nix (Kyle Chandler) turns up in an armored truck and starts meddling.
Carnahan shows skill at bouncing suspicion from one character to another as the destination of the $20 million remains up for debate and the time until the forewarned siege is meant to happen continues shrinking. The plotting gets a bit muddy at times, but the movie keeps sneaky surprises up its sleeve, including the connection of the case to Velez's murder, while also illuminating unexpected complicity between law enforcement and drug traffickers that blurs the lines as to what qualifies as corruption. The notion of who exactly are the good guys is questioned, perhaps a little too pointedly, in the acronyms tattooed across Dane's knuckles.
The muscular direction, moody visuals, and Shorter's glowering score keep the action humming, but the real key is the sharply drawn characters of a highly capable cast. The long friendship and creative collaboration between Damon and Affleck add history to their onscreen rapport. Dane appears calm and methodical, albeit broken by the end of his marriage and the loss of his 10-year-old son to cancer. J.D. is more of a hothead, his volatile energy constantly threatening to explode.
The women disappear from the testosterone-heavy film for a significant stretch, creating an absence. But there's an understated edge to Taylor and Moreno's interplay that makes their characters intriguing. Calle, who made an impression as Supergirl in Andy Muschietti's unfairly mistreated 'The Flash' and appeared in the poetic coming-of-age drama 'In the Summers', which won Sundance's Grand Jury Prize in 2024, walks a shrewd line with her character. Desi has the sullen guardedness of someone who knows not to trust cops and the vulnerability of a woman steadily realizing she's in over her head.
'The Rip' doesn't reinvent the cops-in-a-pressure-cooker genre, but its mix of closed-quarters tension, car chases, and gunfire gets the job done. Thanks to Carnahan and his accomplished cast, it's both more convincing and more watchable than the average original streaming movie.
