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‘The Instigators’ Review: Matt Damon and Casey Affleck Aren’t Half-Bad as Blue-Collar Accessories to a Disastrous Heist
In the past, a star-driven, Doug Liman-directed caper would prop up the summer box office, whereas 'The Instigators' gets a cursory theatrical release en route to streaming.
Both Affleck siblings know that audiences take a certain vicarious pleasure in seeing a well-planned score go according to clockwork, but of the two, only lackadaisical-acting Casey (who’s highly disciplined in real life) revels in what could be called “disorganized crime”: the shaggy unraveling of half-baked holdup, which subsequently requires low-level drones Rory and Cobby to wriggle their way out of a hornet’s nest. Like the spineless Judas he emobided in “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” or the grief-shattered guardian of “Manchester by the Sea,” Affleck’s latest character seems recklessly unserious, which lends a low-key tension to a genre that typically runs on discipline. From a filmmaking perspective, it’s no easy feat taking what looks like so much chaos and organizing it into a character-driven comedy, but that’s just what Affleck and co-writer (and “City on a Hill” series creator) Chuck MacLean have accomplished, giving Liman the blueprint to alternate between unpredictable set-pieces and more relaxed examples of male bonding.
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