It would be easy to dismiss The Rip as a January straight-to-streaming action thriller if it did not come with this kind of star power. A Joe Carnahan cops-and-crime potboiler backed by Artists Equity and led by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck feels like something designed to make noise, not something quietly dropped on Netflix.
And the movie mostly delivers what that pitch implies, sometimes better than you would expect. Damon plays Lieutenant Dane Dumars, who leads a Miami-Dade Tactical Narcotics team into a Hialeah stash house and finds a cartel cache that turns the night into a pressure cooker. The catch is not the money itself, it is what the money does to the room. Dumars does not call it in right away, he controls the information, and the team starts looking at each other like strangers. Carnahan understands how to make a confined situation feel volatile, and the first stretch plays with real procedural momentum.
A lot of why it works is the casting. Damon is good in a role that plays slightly against his recent run of competent, steady “good guy” parts. Dumars reads as smart and capable, but also potentially compromised, which keeps the tension alive even when you can feel the movie steering toward familiar turns. Affleck is solid as the other half of the friendship dynamic, and the best scenes are the ones that let their history do the heavy lifting without overexplaining it. Steven Yeun and Teyana Taylor are both welcome presences, and the ensemble texture helps the distrust land even when the script is being a little too blunt about where it is headed.
The downside is that The Rip still has that Netflix thriller sheen where the movie feels built to be “compulsively watchable” more than genuinely surprising. Carnahan keeps it moving and the set pieces have bite, but the plot mechanics can feel obvious and self-referential, like the movie is congratulating itself for twists you clock early. When it leaves the initial location and opens up, some of the tight, nasty energy leaks out. It is still a decent hang, but you can feel it settling into genre autopilot.
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I ended up liking The Rip more than I expected to, and less than I wanted to. It is better than a lot of recent action-thriller comfort food, and it has enough atmosphere and mistrust to keep you locked in. It just never quite becomes the great Miami cop paranoia movie it keeps teasing. Solid, serviceable, occasionally tense, and a reminder that with this cast and this premise, there was a meaner, sharper version sitting right there.
Score: 6/10
The Rip (2026)
- Cast: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Teyana Taylor, Sasha Calle, Kyle Chandler, Steven Yeun, Scott Adkins, Catalina Sandino Moreno
- Director: Joe Carnahan
- Genre: Action, Crime, Thriller
- Runtime: 112 minutes
- Rated: R
- Release Date: January 16, 2026
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