Boston Boys are Back in B-movie – A Review

God why does Matt Damon always look so fine. Casey Affleck looks like a bum and I don’t support him

This review contains moderate spoilers.

Rory needs $32,450. He has worked out the exact cost of dragging his life back into shape, and even when the robbery promises more, he still wants only that figure. Around him, the plan collapses before it has properly begun. The money vanishes, men with larger appetites start shooting, and Boston’s corrupt political class begins spilling out of the walls. Even as the job mutates into a citywide catastrophe, $32,450 remains the only part of the night Rory cares about.

The robbery is quickly arranged, badly staffed and doomed upon contact with reality. Its organisers speak with the authority of men who think a diagram and a deadline amount to competence, while Rory and Cobby have been recruited because anyone better qualified presumably said no. The job fails, the escape worsens it, and Boston keeps producing people with more to hide than the men running from them. Rory and Cobby spend the film being carried by the force of everyone else’s corruption, two hopeless criminals protected by the fact that the city is full of better ones.

Doug Liman understands how quickly panic becomes funny when nobody has time to process it. His films move as though stopping would allow the consequences to catch up. Plans expire halfway through their explanation, arguments survive car crashes and conversations continue after gunfire has made them obsolete. The Instigators still takes enough time to let the job look merely shabby before revealing how comprehensively doomed it is. From there, Liman keeps passing the damage forward until an armoured vehicle is cutting through Boston because two men could not complete one straightforward robbery.

Matt Damon gives Rory the exhausted severity of someone who resents being forced into his own crime film. He treats armed robbery as an unpleasant administrative task. The amount has been calculated, the objective has been agreed and everyone else keeps making needless alterations to the arrangement. Damon carries the same grave concentration into therapy, criminal planning and police pursuit, as though each might become manageable once the correct information has been entered in the right box. Boston is disintegrating and he still wants the receipt to add up.

Casey Affleck gives the film its finest comic rhythm. Cobby experiences danger as a personal slight, meeting guns, betrayal and imminent arrest with the wounded disbelief of a man whose evening has been ruined through somebody else’s poor manners. Affleck also co-wrote the film, and its sharpest lines feel inseparable from the surprising gravity of his delivery. 

Affleck deserves more appreciation as a comic writer. He understands the possibilities of a man who has learnt the language of emotional health and retained none of its intended meaning. Cobby turns therapy into ammunition. He needles armed criminals, questions the maturity of men who could kill him and treats catastrophe as an act of personal discourtesy. His sarcasm carries the rhythm of genuine hurt, every complaint delivered with the conviction of somebody whose chief objection to disaster is that it has been inconsiderate. Affleck plays him as a man completely certain of his own reasonableness, which only grows funnier as the evidence mounts against him.

Hong Chau I’m sure is excellent in this movie, but I haven’t seen it

Hong Chau enters the film as Rory’s therapist and remains one long after he has taken her hostage. He keeps answering questions, explaining himself and looking to her for guidance while police cars gather behind them. Chau plays the absurdity with a tight, assessing stillness, watching Rory and Cobby as though enough concentration might reveal how two grown men became this hopeless. Cobby immediately treats her as an authority who can confirm that everyone else is behaving badly. The session survives the kidnapping because neither man understands it well enough to know when it has ended.

The rest of the cast feels as though it was selected by drawing names from a very expensive hat. Ron Perlman, Alfred Molina, Ving Rhames and Toby Jones arrive carrying the authority of men expecting a sterner crime thriller. Toby Jones is in everything, so naturally he finds his way in here too. Paul Walter Hauser and Jack Harlow tear through their smaller roles, each finding his own strain of useless bravado. The Thomas Crown reference provides the perfect contrast. Thomas Crown moves through theft as though crime were another branch of good tailoring. Rory and Cobby leave every room with fewer options than they had when they entered it.

Rule for having Ving Rhames in your movie: gets to wear a silly hat

Apple may be bringing back the B-movie by throwing serious money at films with no desire to seem important. The Instigators has movie stars in every corner, a director who knows how to move them and a story whose entire ambition can be written on a cheque. That imbalance gives it character. The cast is grander than the crime, the destruction larger than the need, and the whole production carries itself with the confidence of something made to entertain rather than endure. Ninety minutes (ish), one ruined city and several actors far too distinguished for the stupidity unfolding around them. Keep them coming, Cook.

Rory wants $32,450. Cobby wants everyone to respect his boundaries. Boston pays for both.

*Thank you to Jessica for adding images and captions to this article for a movie she hasn’t seen.