The Instigators

Matt Damon and Casey Affleck starring in an action-comedy film from Doug Liman, the director of {Mr. and Mrs. Smith} and {The Bourne Identity}. As far as an elevator pitch goes for a film, especially one premiering on a streaming service, there's not much more you could really ask for. The question is whether in practice this potential is actually realised in {Apple TV+}'s {The Instigators}.

This movie sees Damon and Affleck starring as effectively wannabe criminals who have turned to the life of crime to solve financial complications or to help out an old friend. The ex-Marine Rory played by Damon and the former convict Cobby played by Affleck are not veteran or experienced master criminals, which is pretty much the entire basis of {The Instigators}. In this movie, the pair end up having to run for their lives after a job goes horribly wrong, a job posed by Michael Stuhlbarg's Mr. Besegai, which sees them robbing a corrupt mayor played by Ron Perlman, who turns to Ving Rhames' law enforcement officer to help keep it quiet and away from the eyes of the press and the vocal public.

As far as a plot goes, {The Instigators} is wafer thin. There's no surprise elements that throw you off the scent, what you see is what you get, and this is apparent from the first couple of minutes when Damon's Rory foreshadows exactly what could possibly go wrong on this job and then continues when the duo are being hunted for carrying a piece of metal engraved with a series of numbers that can pretty much only have a handful of meanings... It's nothing new for an action film to have a hollow plot, but it does feel like {The Instigators} is a particularly bad offender in this regard.

It won't be any surprise to hear that Damon and Affleck are both excellent as the leading duo. They play their characters with precision and a level of ease, which is a compliment because the poor narrative structure also stretches to their character development. The first act of this film flies by at such a rapid pace that you never get a chance to learn more about these two characters and why you should care about them, with any attempt to offer development marred by poor dialogue and implied past encounters that you as a viewer are unaware of. {The Instigators} does attempt to fill some of these gaps as the movie progresses, but the damage is already done and the patchwork structure doesn't exactly help with keeping the ship afloat in choppy waters.

Then there's the supporting cast that never really feel all too important. Jack Harlow has a minor role at best, Alfred Molina and Toby Jones play roles that could have gone to really any other actor, and while Rhames and Perlman do command most scenes they are in, their roles don't really have the gravitas necessary to be leading antagonists. Hong Chau is also fine as the therapist Dr. Donna Rivera, but I do think her very analytical personality takes the sting out of many of the comedic elements in this movie.

And speaking about the humour, Damon plays a canonically dry character that never really laughs, which is a pretty good example as to the level of humour offered up in {The Instigators}. Damon has a few running jokes that occasionally lead to a giggle, but really the weight of the comedy side of this film is placed right on the shoulders of Affleck's witty and smart-mouthed Cobby, who is the real star of this film. Effectively, to call {The Instigators} an action-comedy is probably a bit too lenient, as it's an action-comedy in the same vein as {Spenser Confidential}, {6 Underground}, or {The Family Plan}, and not the actually funny {The Other Guys}, {The Nice Guys}, or the {Bad Boys} movies.

With this being an {Apple TV+} production you can at least take solace in the fact that the cinematography and filming of {The Instigators} is top-quality. This movie, for all its vices, is beautifully shot and feels premium in that regard, it just needed a bit of extra care and refinement taken with its narrative direction. Granted, {The Instigators} is only around 100 minutes long, which is no doubt a contributing factor to the often rushed-feeling story. To me, this is a bit hit or miss, because the shorter runtime makes the film more desirable, but if an extra 20 minutes would have meant a more seamless and coherent plot and character development then it would have been a welcome extension.

{The Instigators} won't go down as one of {Apple TV+}'s best offerings, but if you have access to the streamer it's still worth a watch as it's still an undeniably entertaining and high-quality production. While I stand by the fact that {Apple TV+} presents the overall best-on-average slate of television, the streamer still hasn't quite found its groove in the feature length space, and that's apparent again in {The Instigators}.