Anyone can see that the heist at the heart of “The Instigators” is a bad idea: A two-bit crime boss knows the Boston mayor has been padding his pockets for decades, and figures they’re never fatter than on election night, when Beantown’s biggest donors fork over envelopes stuffed with cash. Said mobster wants to send in a team of dimwitted guys to relieve the crooked politician of all those 11th-hour “campaign contributions.” There’s just one small problem: “What if Choy wins the run-off?” asks Matt Damon’s Rory, who figures the corruption they’re targeting could cost the mayor the election.
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In “The Instigators,” that small problem quickly snowballs into a veritable avalanche of complications, as Damon and Casey Affleck play characters grossly ill-equipped to be stealing from Boston’s most powerful man. As blue-collar Rory, Damon represents the unshaven and inexperienced polar opposite of a pro like Jason Bourne (whom this film’s director, Doug Liman, helped establish as an action hero some 22 years ago). For Affleck, who co-wrote the film and cast himself as alcoholic ex-con Cobby, the gig serves as the antithesis to something else — namely, older brother Ben’s ultra-slick heist movie “The Town.”
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 a 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.
Technically, it’s the fault of their boss (Michael Stuhlbarg, who brings maximum menace to a few short scenes) that things go sideways. Not only is there practically no cash to be lifted from the election-night party, but the job completely unravels when their sociopathic team captain (rapper Jack Harlow) goes rogue and decides to hold Mayor Miccelli (Ron Perlman) and his cronies at gunpoint. Refusing to concede either the election or the loss of a silver bracelet on which the combination to his safe is printed, the fuming incumbent dispatches his private enforcer (Ving Rhames) to fetch the missing MacGuffin.
While Miccelli needs that code to cover his tracks, the otherwise emptyhanded Rory realizes he could use the mayor’s personal stash to square years of unpaid child support. Not until that debt is settled will the courts let Rory see his son. As it happens, neither Rory nor Cobby is much of a criminal, and while every robber surely has his reasons, it’s hard to fault these two, especially when the victim is a fat-cat politician who seems to have stepped straight out of a Batman movie. Turns out Cobby went to jail for an honorable cause, and Rory isn’t just a respectable ex-Marine, but a trauma-scarred veteran whose therapist (Hong Chau) fears he may be a suicide risk.
That’s how the good doctor, Donna Rivera, gets mixed up in this mess, voluntarily posing as Rory’s hostage when in fact she hopes to shield him from self-harm by accompanying the two amateur criminals on the lam. The respectfully flirtatious dynamic between Cobby and his friend’s shrink feels more formulaic, but effective enough, as Dr. Rivera’s presence gives these two desperados (one of whom was badly shot during the robbery) reason to live. 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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In the “Road House” director’s hands, aspects of “The Instigators” play every bit as bombastic as a big-studio action movie, even though it’s ultimately destined for Apple’s small-screen streaming service. Liman delivers pyrotechnics, whereby at least two buildings are blown to smithereens, as well as an intense car chase that begins with Rory racing down an alley, before his vehicle is smashed backwards for a block and a half by an overzealous law enforcement officer. What begins with Rory and Cobby so casual they nearly forget to put on their masks escalates to the point that they’re donning firemen’s uniforms and hijacking the most conspicuous getaway vehicle one can imagine.
It’s only there, in the movie’s bombastic last act, that “The Instigators” runs out of momentum. The title implies that Rory and Cobby are unwitting catalysts, which is true to the extent that the “Die Hard”-level climax couldn’t be farther from their initial idea of a waltz-in/waltz-out assignment, where guns were intended merely as an intimidating prop to make people do what they want. As it happens, the movie works best in the downtime, when there’s wry, slightly combative banter between the two antiheroes, and by the finale, they both seem exhausted and ready to go home — or to head for Montreal, as the case may be.
Both Damon and Affleck have made their share of heist movies, including that most polished of capers, “Ocean’s Eleven,” where meticulous planning minimizes the speedbumps en route to a big score. “The Instigators” is fueled by a very different energy — closer in style to Steven Soderbergh’s “Out of Sight” — as the Damon-Affleck duo play things unprepared and therefore obliged to improvise a path between setbacks. That makes for a few memorable moments, as when hungover Cobby uses a neighborhood kid to unlock the breathalyzer on his motorcycle, or later, when they realize the armored truck they’ve boosted has an armed guard still in the back.
The result isn’t necessarily more realistic than other examples of the genre, but it’s somehow more relatable. Stick through the credits to see how the brains behind the operation fare. If you think about it, that pair are the real instigators, whereas Rory and Cobby aren’t half-bad.
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