TL;DR: The Rip isn’t the sharpest cop thriller you’ll ever see, but strong casting, Damon and Affleck’s built-in chemistry, and a confident vibes-first approach make it ideal streaming entertainment for a low-effort, high-enjoyment night in.

There’s a specific kind of movie I call a couch classic. Not because it’s lazy or disposable, but because its ideal viewing environment involves sweatpants, a dim lamp, and the implicit understanding that you are not pausing this thing to analyze blocking choices. You’re letting it wash over you. You’re vibing. You’re hanging out. And Netflix’s The Rip is exactly that kind of movie.

I watched The Rip at home, late, mildly distracted, and fully prepared to check out if it lost me. Instead, it locked into that sweet spot where I didn’t care that it wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. I just enjoyed the way it felt in my hands. This is a vibes-first cop thriller, the cinematic equivalent of putting on Heat gifs and letting your brain fill in the subtext. It’s not prestige. It’s not trash. It’s good streaming entertainment, elevated almost entirely by casting, mood, and the undeniable gravitational pull of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck sharing a frame like it’s 1998 again.

The Streaming Thriller Sweet Spot

Let me get this out of the way: there are very few good movies I wouldn’t rather see in a theater. Big screen, big sound, communal gasps, the whole ritual. But there’s a subclass of genre films that feel engineered for streaming. They don’t demand your full reverence. They reward half-attention without punishing you for it. You can check your phone, come back, and still know exactly what emotional frequency the movie is operating on.

The Rip lives comfortably in that space. It’s a crime thriller inspired by a true story, but really it’s adapting an idea more than an event: the mythic cop rip, the stash-house score so big it poisons everyone within smelling distance of the money. Writer-director Joe Carnahan isn’t reinventing the genre here. He’s remixing it, leaning on our familiarity with these tropes so he can focus on tone instead of mechanics.

Is it as smart as it wants to be? No. Is it as tense as it could have been? Also no. But it understands the assignment better than most streaming originals: give me characters I like watching, situations that feel dangerous enough, and a mood that doesn’t collapse under scrutiny. That’s all I ask on a Tuesday night.

Damon and Affleck: The Movie Knows Why You’re Here

Let’s not kid ourselves. The Rip is being sold on Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, and rightly so. Their decades-long friendship is baked into the DNA of American movie stardom at this point, and the film uses that cultural shorthand like a cheat code. You don’t need extensive backstory to believe these two men have history. You just have to look at them.

Damon plays Lieutenant Dane Dumars, a Miami narcotics cop thrust into leadership after the murder of his captain, Jackie Velez. Affleck is Detective Sergeant JD Byrne, Dane’s closest friend and emotional pressure point, whose relationship with the late captain was the worst-kept secret in the department. From their first scenes together, the movie leans hard into what we already know about these actors. Damon’s controlled intensity. Affleck’s wounded bravado. The way they look at each other like they’re perpetually mid-argument even when they’re agreeing.

What works here isn’t the dialogue so much as the shared screen language. When JD accuses Dane of playing him, Affleck’s face does half the work. When Dane recoils at the implication that he might want the money for himself, Damon sells it with that specific mix of guilt and indignation he’s been perfecting since The Talented Mr. Ripley. Carnahan is smart enough to step back and let that do the heavy lifting.

A Plot That’s Weirdly Over-Explained and Still Vibes Anyway

The setup for The Rip is compelling but oddly structured. We’re given a lot of information early, arguably too much. Captain Jackie Velez is murdered after a tense phone call. Internal Affairs and the FBI are circling. The department is already reeling from corruption scandals. Dane receives an anonymous text pointing him to a cartel stash house, and he convinces his team to check it out off the books.

That team includes Steven Yeun as Detective Mike Ro, Teyana Taylor as Detective Numa Baptiste, Catalina Sandino Moreno as Detective Lolo Salazar, and Sasha Calle as Desi, the young woman connected to the house that changes everything. When they find over $20 million hidden in the walls, the movie essentially flips into a slow-burn paranoia mode. Someone will come for that money. Probably multiple someones. And the biggest threat might be sitting in the room.

Here’s the thing: The Rip never fully commits to mystery. You can see the shape of the story long before the characters catch up, and Carnahan still tries to manufacture uncertainty as if this were a twist-driven thriller. In another movie, that mismatch between knowledge and tension would be a problem. Here, it oddly adds to the charm. The film feels like it’s cosplaying as a sharper, meaner cop thriller, and everyone involved seems in on the joke.

Casting as Structural Support

If The Rip works, it’s because the cast refuses to let it sag. Steven Yeun brings a restless intelligence to every scene he’s in, even when the script gives him little to do beyond react. Teyana Taylor radiates quiet authority, grounding the film whenever it threatens to float off into self-indulgence. Catalina Sandino Moreno adds a lived-in weariness that sells the idea of long-term institutional rot better than any exposition dump.

Kyle Chandler shows up as a scruffy DEA agent and immediately reminds you why he’s the patron saint of American competence. Scott Adkins pops in as an FBI agent with just enough physical menace to keep things interesting. Rarely does a scene feel empty, even when it’s narratively thin. Personality does a lot of work here, and this cast is stacked with it.

Vibes Over Precision, and Why That’s Fine

I won’t pretend this movie wouldn’t have benefited from a sharper script. There are moments where The Rip gestures at moral complexity without fully engaging it, where character motivations feel implied rather than earned. This could have been a great thriller if the writing matched the confidence of the performances.

But that’s not the movie we got. What we got is a solid, enjoyable, well-acted streaming thriller that understands its limitations and plays to its strengths. It doesn’t demand analysis. It invites you to sit back and enjoy watching good actors inhabit familiar archetypes with just enough self-awareness to keep it fun.

In a streaming landscape flooded with content that’s either aggressively disposable or desperately self-important, The Rip threads the needle. It’s a good hang. And sometimes, that’s more than enough.