Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Writer: Marco van Belle
Stars: Chris Pratt, Rebecca Ferguson, Kali Reis

Synopsis: In the near future, a detective stands on trial accused of murdering his wife. He has 90 minutes to prove his innocence to the advanced A.I. Judge he once championed, before it determines his fate.

It pains me to give a thumbs down to Mercy, a film from Timur Bekmambetov, the man behind the misunderstood historical-fiction “classic” (I’m putting the word in quotes so my editor won’t cut off my access to the InSession Film Slack account), Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. A pioneer of the “screenlife” genre, Bekmambetov helped usher in films like Searching, Missing, Unfriended, and, yes, the infamous 2025 Ice Cube entry, War of the Worlds.

So yes, Bekmambetov’s career has taken a downturn since that pre-Civil War horror epic. Unfortunately, while he has continued to excel as a producer, his directorial efforts feel less inspired, like a young Lincoln wildly swinging an axe, missing the mark, and somehow still managing to give cinema a bad name. 

Those are the thoughts I had with Mercy, a perfectly serviceable film because it is a watered down rip off of Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, until it begins to turn a corner that feel like plot points were dropped (or ignored) as if Bekmambetov was treating the medium of cinema as an exercise in logistics, losing nuance, emotional beats, and rushing transitions that make the story too clean, too predictable, and too conventional.

The story begins with Detective Christopher “Chris” Raven (Chris Pratt), an officer in the LAPD, who wakes up on trial for the murder of his wife, Nicole (Annabelle Wallis). Chris is not in a normal courtroom. He is awakened by Judge Maddox (Rebecca Ferguson), who is an artificial intelligence adjudicator of the Mercy program, a piece of software that Chris helped create, to cut all the red tape and lawyer tricks in the name of justice. 

The gist of the trial is simple: he has 90 minutes to prove his innocence, or he will be convicted of murder, with Maddox serving as judge, jury, and executioner. As a screenlife film, Maddox allows Detective Raven to comb through the private digital accounts of his wife, his daughter, and the suspects. Along the way, we learn that Chris has had a rough stretch in recent years, including a struggle with alcohol following the on-the-job death of his former partner (Kenneth Choi).

To piece things together, he must rely on his inner circle, a group of people who may suspect that Chris did it, or may be suspects themselves. This includes his new partner, Jaq (True Detective: Night Country’s Kali Reis), whom Raven asks to track down leads. Also among the last people to see his estranged wife alive is Rob (This Is Us’s Chris Sullivan), his AA sponsor, who has become part of the family. There is also his daughter, Britt (Beau Is Afraid’s Kylie Rogers), whose unresolved grief leads her to question her father’s innocence.

Mercy starts serviceable, like a digital puzzle-box screenlife thriller with an intriguing setup, dropping the viewer into an unfamiliar world. However, Pratt’s performance ultimately falls short, failing to generate the sustained, believable anxiety essential to a film like this, especially one that functions as a tricked-up, single-location exercise. Frankly, watching Pratt trying to cry and look scared is like watching a narcissist with crocodile tears. 

Then there’s the bigger issue: Bekmambetov’s plotting, which is among the most convoluted I’ve seen in a thriller in recent memory. That shouldn’t be a surprise coming from an accomplished producer, screenlife films are built to save on costs, often delivering the most basic, paint-by-numbers version of the genre while dutifully following the plot-point playbook step by step. Here, the film piles on red herrings that exist only to distract.

There is no payoff or logic, gleefully teasing that the wife is involved in something shady or that the “real” villain abducts someone for reasons the story never earns or even explains. This is the kind of movie where you can narrow the outcome down to one or two endings and twists within the first 15 minutes. Compounding the problem is a script with all the backbone of a perimysium, suggesting that Ferguson’s AI Judge can suddenly make rational judgments and display human emotion simply because Pratt’s character orders her to do so.

Yup, if that wasn’t proof the software was created by a man as a flight of cinematic fancy, nothing will. 

Mercy is simply not worth watching, in the theater or on demand. The experience quickly collapses into a convoluted, paint-by-numbers screenlife picture, packed with bad performances, yawn-inducing plot points, and a few empty red herrings. So, instead of paying over fifty-dollars for tickets and snacks, stay home, pay just under four bucks (or watch for free on HBO), Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, and thank me later. 

You can watch Mercy only in theaters starting January 23rd!

Grade: D+

Director: Adam Bhala Lough
Stars: Adam Bhala Lough, Heidy Khlaaf, Divtendra Singh Jadoun

Synopsis: A filmmaker’s humorous journey into artificial intelligence leads to unexpected questions about humanity’s future and our relationship with emerging technology.

In Deepfaking Sam Altman, filmmaker Adam Bhala Lough turns a roadblock into a revelation. What begins as a straightforward attempt to interview one of the most influential figures in artificial intelligence becomes something far stranger, funnier, and ultimately more revealing. Unable to gain access to Sam Altman himself, Lough builds an AI stand-in from Altman’s public words, interviews, and appearances. The result is a documentary that feels less like a profile and more like a conversation with the cultural moment we’re currently trying to understand and navigate.

Premiering at SXSW 2025 and winning Best Documentary at the Chelsea Film Festival, Deepfaking Sam Altman positions itself at the intersection of verité filmmaking and speculative play. Produced in collaboration with Hartbeat and Vox Media Studios and inspired in part by reporting from New York Magazine, the film combines investigative curiosity with a distinctly self-aware sense of absurdity.

If you’re new to AI, Sam Altman is the face of it. Altman is the head of OpenAI, the company behind your online best friend, ChatGPT. Lough, previously known for HBO’s Telemarketers, brings his familiar blend of persistence and vulnerability to the project. His initial goal to understand the rapidly evolving AI landscape by speaking directly to one of its central architects is logical and in line with audiences wanting to learn more about AI and the people behind it. Every access attempt is rebuffed and becomes part of the film’s thesis: power in the AI age is often opaque, carefully managed, and frustratingly out of reach. Rather than stall, Lough reframes the question. If the human source won’t speak, what happens when the machine does? As well as trying to address all our natural fears around AI, especially when it comes to our careers. 

Enter Sam Bot. Constructed from Altman’s public-facing digital footprint, the AI version is glitchy, oddly charming, and, at times, disconcertingly articulate. Through these exchanges, Deepfaking Sam Altman explores not just what AI can say, but what we are willing to hear from it. It verges on parody and a dystopian warning; it’s clever in allowing audiences to come to that conclusion themselves. 

The tone is sharp and often very funny, but never flippant. The music is over-the-top, there’s plenty of footage from interviews, the news, protests, and online conversations to keep you invested and provoke conversation around your experiences and opinions of AI. 

What I did enjoy was that throughout this investigation into OpenAI, they’re constantly using AI tools that have been available for years. Such as asking Siri when his last call was (he could easily look himself) and using a maps service in the car (we have road signs and physical maps available), showcasing how maybe our fears are a little irrational since we’re already using so many. Or, it’s highlighting how quickly AI tools become part of your everyday life. 

What gives Deepfaking Sam Altman its emotional resonance is its focus on connection. Lough’s conversations with Sam Bot gradually shift from information-seeking to something more personal, even philosophical. The film begins to interrogate why we crave answers from singular figures in the first place, and what it means when those figures are replaced by simulations. In a world where public personas are increasingly curated and inaccessible, the artificial stand-in becomes, paradoxically, more available than the real thing. The SamBot showing a will to live was very unnerving as a viewer and heightened fears of what AI can grow into.

There is a nice balance between AI and seeing Lough’s personal life, from his children’s hamster being unwell to visiting his family in India. The contrast is showing why human connection is incredibly important and how our desires and natural ability to make connections are why we feel connected to AI. 

Rather than offering definitive conclusions about the ethics or future of artificial intelligence, Deepfaking Sam Altman embraces uncertainty. It acknowledges the chaos of the current moment, where innovation outpaces understanding and authority often speaks through abstraction. In the end, Deepfaking Sam Altman is less about Sam Altman than it is about us; our desire for guidance, our comfort with proxies, and our willingness to engage with synthetic voices when human ones fall silent. It is a film that thinks in real time, asking not just where AI is taking us, but who we’re talking to along the way. Through a jokey, comfortable tone and real footage, this documentary makes for a very interesting and fun watch. Definitely for fans of documentaries, AI, and ethical dilemmas.

Grade: B+

Director: François Ozon
Writer: François Ozon
Stars: Benjamin Voisin, Rebecca Marder, Swann Arlaud

Synopsis: In 1930s Algeria, the daily life of an indifferent Frenchman is shaken by the death of his mother and a fateful encounter on a beach.

This year (in Québec, at least), we will have the privilege of seeing two adaptations of literary masterpieces that not only continue to be taught in schools worldwide but also stand the test of time within contemporary society. You can always discover something new while re-reading Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (which looks to be desecrated by Emerald Fennell in her upcoming 50 Shades of Grey-esque adaptation, though none can fully judge the work without having seen it), and the same can be said with Albert Camus’ The Stranger (L’étranger). 

This might be a controversial opinion, but since Wuthering Heights has been adapted to film time and again (to middling results), transposing The Stranger to the screen seems like a more daunting task, especially because the few that dared (Luchino Visconti, most notably) failed miserably. Camus’ book asks its readers to put themselves in the shoes of a man with little to no emotions, feeling indifferent (or bored) about his mother’s death, and the eventual killing he will commit under the sun. 

The first-person narrative, which creates a discordant connection between the protagonist and the book’s readers, is the most essential element of Camus’ masterpiece, but does it seem fully suited to filmic proportions? This is the question François Ozon asks himself as he transposes the novel to the screen, and while many creative liberties are taken to deepen the sociopolitical context of Meursault’s (Benjamin Voisin) killing and change the perspectives of the story, the end result still ends up being nothing short of masterful, which feels like a miracle given how someone who, like me, had a profound epiphany while reading Camus’ book in school, doesn’t feel one ounce of anger towards the changes made in his version of the text. 

In fact, many of Ozon’s permutations broaden our conception of the character, without employing a first-person device to put us in Meursault’s shoes. The political context – in particular, French-occupied Algiers – imbues the atmosphere with a disquieting tension that never really leaves the audience or the protagonist, who wanders through an environment he feels a stranger in. Meursault has never really “fit in” with the places he has lived, but feels more uncomfortable being in a country that isn’t his, which is occupied by colonizers from his birth country. Camus never really deepened this context in the book, nor does he give the Arab Meursault killed during The Stranger’s midpoint a name, while the context is the text of Ozon’s film. 

The first hour or so of Ozon’s 122-minute psychological drama puts us in the middle of Algiers’ disquieting atmosphere. It’s often a silent introductory half, as the protagonist barely speaks. When he does, it’s usually to say variations of the sentence, “I don’t know.” Manu Dacosse’s (one of the best cinematographers working today) visual language completely absorbs us in the internal and external tension that lies within Meursault’s very being, rendered in a stark, almost classical black-and-white. 

We sit with Meursault as he contemplates not only what his mother’s death means for him, but what it means to live in an occupied state as an occupier. He’s a stranger in a land that doesn’t belong to him, and, in fact, doesn’t even know if returning to Paris would ease him of the internal suffering he clearly feels (without showing an ounce of exterior emotion), attempting to fabricate a life in Algiers with his girlfriend, Marie Cardona (Rebecca Marder), without fully having a connection with her, or anyone around him. 

It’s a miserable existence, sadly worsened when he kills an Arab who pointed a knife at him and his friend Raymond Sintès (Pierre Lottin), and is condemned to a trial not on what he did, but on who he is. This is also the second part of the novel, but it is far more psychologically active in Ozon’s hands than when Camus wrote it in the first person. The French filmmaker attempts to excavate the very nature (more aptly, Camus’ conception) of Meursault within the confines of a thrilling courtroom drama that rarely questions his actions (when it should be the heart of the trial), but examines his lack of human emotions as the heart driving the murder he committed. 

Of course, like in Camus’ book, we don’t have an answer that lies at the heart of his quiet nature, but Meursault seemingly feels more three-dimensional in the hands of Ozon and Voisin, whose second collaboration with the director is an even bigger winner than Summer of ‘85. In fact, The Stranger might be Ozon’s most artistically and thematically compelling work, whose modifications he makes to the source material enhance our understanding of who the character might be (since Camus leaves much to interpretation), much further than how he was written (the millisecond of homoeroticism, for example, seems insignificant, but it may provide a broader key to Meursault’s complex inner feelings). 

The black-and-white looks utterly spectacular on the biggest possible screen, and the atmospheric sounds envelop the bleak environment that has been stripped of its color ever since France colonized it, creating a landscape that feels somehow more textured than how Camus described the Algiers Meursault lived in. Then comes the final scene, which sees the protagonist reckon his (lack of) spiritual beliefs with a priest, played by Anatomy of a Fall’s Swann Arlaud. It might run a little too long, but the way in which Ozon wrestles with theology and the great mystery – and certainty – at the heart of being human (death) could be the best thing he’s ever written. When one knows they are going to die, the most profound spiritual experiences usually occur, even in people who consistently want to reject them. 

Meursault is faced with a push-pull that says more about his character than anything Camus wrote in The Stranger, transcending it from mere literature to a text that allows us to understand what lies at the very heart of being human. Not only does Ozon do the work justice with his adaptation ofThe Stranger, but he may even surpass it by cogently interpreting what was initially written as the smaller part of a big sociopolitical problem. And by giving the person Meursault killed a name at the tail end of the film, the context (and the protagonist’s place within it) becomes the most important element of the character study at the heart of the source material. 

The Stranger is currently playing in several Québec cinemas, but should Ozon’s film ever be released in other parts of the world, it’s one that demands your attention.

Grade: A-

Director: Ryan Prows
Writers: Tim Cairo, Jake Gibson, Shaye Ogbonna, Ryan Prows
Stars: Dermot Mulroney, Justin Long, CM Punk

Synopsis: An L.A. cop discovers a local task force is hiding a secret that puts the residents of his childhood neighborhood in danger.

It’s no secret that my favorite genre of movies is Horror. I love most of the subgenres that came from it, the stories that are being told and being on the edge of my seat with what goes on onscreen. It’s a new year and that means there are going to be a lot of ways for filmmakers to challenge us as audiences and see how far they can go with their stories. Unfortunately, I wasn’t challenged by this new horror/action/fantasy film Night Patrol. You know when people say, “January movie releases are trash” and you want to ignore them because a specific movie looks really cool? Going in with only seeing the teaser trailer took away a little bit of the pain of not really enjoying it that much. 

The movie begins with Wazi (RJ Cyler) in an interrogation room. He’s badly wounded on his stomach. The captain enters the room and he gives Wazi documents to sign. The documents are basically telling them that he was responsible for something that recently happened. The movie takes a time jump to just a few days ago. Wazi goes to meet up with his girl, Primo (Zuri Reed). They converse in her car until the red and blue lights begin to shine in their rear view. For no reason whatsoever, they ask Primo to step out of the car. We’re introduced to Officer Hawkins (Justin Long). He walks up to said car and shoots Primo, execution style. Wazi flees the scene and evades the cops. Soon after, he’s approached by one of the cops that they were stopped by. A ring on Wazi’s finger starts to glow green, the cop’s bewildered by what he’s seen and he runs away. The beginning of this movie really showed promise and I was anticipating what the rest of the movie was going to be like.

In a lot of movies today, we’re given the privilege to have them broken into different chapters. Our three groups of characters are the Zulu Crips, the Piru Bloods, and, of course, the LAPD. Not too long after our intro we’re taken on a ride along with officer Hawkins and officer Carr (Jermaine Fowler). Carr used to be a member of the Crips as a youth but he decided to really make a difference in his community and join the force. The trope of a former hood nut turned authority figure isn’t given any new elements from the writers. They try to give the audience an End of Watch kind of vibe but the two actors are let down because of the underdeveloped script. They’re supposed to have been partners for a while but it feels like they were just put together a week ago. We get drops of details about the officers that include info about their dead fathers, life in the service, etc.

We’re introduced to some members of the Bloods such as Bornelius (Freddie Gibbs), Tripp (YG), and Three Deuce (Flying Lotus). We only see them for about 25 minutes of the movie because they’re only there to press Wazi for information about Bornelius’ sister, joining the Crips in a battle against the members of the Night Patrol, and trying to make sense of the absurd things that are going on. Carr has issues with his mother, Ayanda (Nicki Micheaux), over how his father died. Ayanda is the head of the Crips and the neighborhood wacko to everyone in the neighborhood. She’s also the only person that knows anything about their Zulu roots, the vampires, and she’s given the honor of being head in charge of exposition as well. Hawkins tries to destroy the Night Patrol from the inside but he’s welcomed by his father who’s supposed to be dead. He’s revealed to be the actual head of the vampires and that he needs his son to join them in battle. He gives Hawkins his blood and he begins his transformation into a vampire. 

Director Ryan Prows takes us on a journey that is underdeveloped and doesn’t live up to its premise. It was good to see this cast of Black actors, but I wish it was in a better movie. At times, the action was so cartoonish that I had to shake my head. In the pre battle montage, the Zulu Crips put up their crosses and artifacts around their housing complex. There was no reason for them to do that when the vampires burst in there with no hesitation. I had so many questions such as, “What have the vampires been up to before the battle with the Crips and Bloods began?” and “Why don’t the vampires have regular fangs instead of corny grills in their mouths?” Topics like police brutality, gang culture, and why cops act the way they are are touched on but are never fully explored. It’s like the writers said, “This is the way things are in this movie. Come to your own conclusions.” It’s very ambitious but the four writers couldn’t really make sense of it all. I enjoyed some of the camera techniques and the story between the Zulu Crips and the vampires. At the end we’re left with decent performances from the actors, ok effects, cartoonishly funny action, and an underdeveloped script. Not too bad for a Shudder January release, don’t you think?

Grade: C

Director: Benjamin Flaherty
Writer: Benjamin Flaherty

Synopsis: Three people navigate a dangerous treatment industry rife with insurance fraud.

Winner of the SXSW Jury Award for Best Documentary and opening at DCTV Firehouse Cinema in New York on January 16, 2026, Shuffle hits audiences with strong urgency and quiet force. Directed by Benjamin Flaherty, the film is an unflinching examination of the billion-dollar addiction treatment industry. The film exposes how care, insurance, and profit have become dangerously entangled. What distinguishes Shuffle from many investigative documentaries is how personal it feels. 

Flaherty tells this story through the lens of his recovery from addiction, grounding the film’s investigation in lived experience rather than detached inquiry. Shuffle is not sensationalist or accusatory; it is measured, patient, and deeply attentive to the human cost of systemic failure.

The film begins at street level, examining a seemingly small-time scam in which people struggling with addiction are effectively bought and sold for their insurance policies. These individuals are “shuffled” between treatment centers, sober homes, and relapse-triggering environments, not to heal, but to keep insurance money flowing. As Flaherty follows the money, Shuffle exposes a network of collusion involving private operators and public policy failures that have created ideal conditions for exploitation.

Shot over the course of three years, the documentary follows three individuals caught in this insurance-fueled cycle of fraud. In this world, survival hinges not on access to treatment, but on escaping it. Their journeys are harrowing, marked by instability, manipulation, and constant risk. Each person is allowed complexity, contradiction, and dignity. Their interviews feel intimate, and the documentary supports sections with childlike animations, drawings, and scribbles to help the audience imagine the scenes the interviewees are describing and support the voiceover. Shuffle isn’t afraid to show the harsh reality of addiction and recovery, which includes relapsing and overdosing. Nicole and her partner’s suffering will pull at your heartstrings. Daniel’s story is gut-wrenching – your hopes will be high, and then it’ll come crashing down. To say this documentary is an emotional rollercoaster is an understatement.  

The film’s investigative reach is equally impressive. It’s incredibly eye-opening and shocking to see how lucrative, unhelpful, and at times, fake, this industry is. The documentary has access to whistleblowers exposing fraud from within the system, alongside experts who trace how well-intentioned reforms opened the door to abuse. In the wake of the opioid epidemic, insurance companies were required to cover addiction and mental health treatment at parity with other medical conditions. Shuffle makes clear how this gap became a profit engine, preying on more than 40 million Americans struggling with addiction.

All interviews feel fresh rather than rehearsed. There is no reliance on flashy editing or heavy-handed scoring. The film trusts its material and its audience, allowing testimonies and evidence to accumulate with devastating clarity. This quiet approach makes its conclusions all the more searing.

What is most saddening to learn and understand is that these false promises are deceptive but not illegal. Taking advantage of people at their most vulnerable is promoted for profit, and humans are seen as money makers rather than for who they are. This documentary isn’t offering a solution, but offers a warning. A warning that you’ll be recruited on social media sites such as Facebook, and those recruiters get a finder’s fee. The shiny websites will lure you in, and a lot of the real-life establishments are old hotels. The rehab facilities then use addictive medications to treat addiction (the irony is outstanding!) and will put drugs back into bodies and keep them addicted for a lifetime.

But there is a little light at the end of the tunnel – not all hope is lost. You will finish this documentary willing for people to be sober, willing for them to succeed, and it might just increase your empathy and humility. Ultimately, Shuffle is a sharply reported exposé and a deeply personal reckoning. It asks difficult questions about how society treats addiction, who benefits from recovery, and what happens when care becomes commerce. By intertwining investigation with empathy, Flaherty has made a documentary that informs, implicates, and resonates. With a respectable runtime of one hour and twenty-three minutes, this documentary is a must-watch for fans of real, hard-hitting stories and investigative drama.

Grade: A

Director: Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke
Writer: JRatchapoom Boonbunchachoke
Stars: Davika Hoorne, Witsarut Himmarat, Apasiri Nitibhon

Synopsis: A spirit possesses a vacuum cleaner, causing many consequences.

If you’ve seen Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme, you probably remember the line, “When you see this woman act, you’ll feel like you got your c*ck sucked by a vacuum cleaner!” If you ever wondered what that felt like, you should watch Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s directorial debut ,A Useful Ghost, in which the spirit of a dead wife possesses a vacuum cleaner and, yes, does what the aforementioned quote says. If you think I’m spoiling something from this certifiably insane movie, don’t worry – I’ve barely scratched the surface. This is one of those audacious productions where you’re either fully on board with it or will check out as soon as you see the spirit of a dead person being reincarnated inside a household appliance. 

For me, I had a relatively mixed experience watching Boonbunchachoke’s Fierté Montréal-award winning ghost comedy, which starts out as a purely pleasurable, almost mad genre film with such mordantly-timed humor it’s almost impossible to resist falling in love with what the Thai filmmaker proposes. The first half of the movie is a total laugh riot, where this writer almost fell off his chair multiple times because he was laughing so hard. It is bizarre, sure, but the profound humanity at the heart of this otherworldly story felt incredibly tangible, and the core relationship the film tracks, between March (Witsarut Himmarat) and ghost Nat (Davika Hoorne) is so textured that it’s not hard to fall in love between the two characters. 

There’s a study of grief at the middle of Boonbunchachoke’s screenplay that’s profoundly affecting, especially as one contrasts March’s relationship with his vacuum as a sort of memento with “sentimental value” that carries the soul of her deceased wife. Many who cope with the loss of a loved one will sometimes keep frivolous objects, with no monetary value, for themselves because it carries a personal history to them and reminds them of the people that were a part of their lives before they moved on to another plane of existence. March does things with the vacuum that may put him in jail, but who can blame him when the spirit of his wife is intrinsically attached to the object and just won’t disappear?

These questions that lie within A Useful Ghost are intriguing and sets the stage for a movie that explores what it means to be a human in a world that feels less grounded in reality by the day. Plus the comedy is very funny – calm, peaceful monks swearing at the sight of the ghost? C’mon, this is typical fantasy slapstick, and it works to brilliant effect in Boonbunchachoke’s genre hybrid. 

The relationship between March and Nat is also well-developed, with the pair giving performances of great sensitivity, especially in the film’s latter half, where they ruminate on their own existence – and mortality – as they face a planet they don’t understand. The back half of the movie is also where A Useful Ghost began to lose me, turning the impeccably-timed (and often caustic) comedy into a rightfully angry political satire that, unfortunately, undoes a lot of the strong character work of the first half in favor of a wild ending that will certainly have lots of people talking, but whose emotional impact is stunted by blunt provocation. 

Boonbunchachoke has a lot (perhaps too much) on his mind, and I doubt many will disagree with what he says. However, the approach chosen feels like a massive departure from what its former half had acclimated the audience to, especially as the story moves into more comedic territory. Ditching this halfway through and extending the runtime to near interminable lengths doesn’t seem like the right move when A Useful Ghost has already built so much momentum before losing most of it altogether. There are scenes in the second part of the film that will undoubtedly get people talking (one, in particular, is so wild it makes everything in Jerry Zucker’s Ghost look like small potatoes in comparison), but is it only because of how provocative they are?

There is some wild stuff in this that is too good to be kept secret, but after the effect of being bemused by what’s on screen wears off, you’re left with the odd sense that this project feels incomplete and that the screwball ghost comedy was a far more intriguing aspect than the political satire. It is still an admirable effort and sets Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke as a filmmaker to watch as he makes his next move. However, the overall result of a film with such an insane premise should be far better (and more memorable) than what it sadly ends up being. Though if you wanted to see someone getting his private parts sucked by a vacuum cleaner, boy, do I have the movie for you…

Grade: C

Director: Joe Carnahan
Writers: Joe Carnahan, Michael McGrale
Stars: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Steven Yeun

Synopsis: A group of Miami cops discovers a stash of millions in cash, leading to distrust as outsiders learn about the huge seizure, making them question who to rely on.

The Rip takes the action film, a genre that will always be classic Americana and gleefully overloads it with antiheroes, leaving you to question who’s good, who’s bad, and whether that line between hero and villain even exists anymore. Especially in today’s world, where we are begging for heroes, actively seeking them out, and craving genuine conviction, we are, as Aaron Sorkin would say, so thirsty for it that we’ll crawl through the desert toward a mirage and drink the sand.

Yes, the world needs heroes, and Netflix’s The Rip delivers them. 

The story follows Matt Damon as Lieutenant Dane Dumars (Matt Damon), who leads a team in Miami’s Narcotics Unit. Their division is being put under the microscope when a rumor makes the rounds of “inside heist teams,” where cops play robbers and steal money from illegal drug stash houses across the city. While talking to the Major (Néstor Carbonell), Dane’s team is interviewed, including his hothead second in command, JD (Ben Affleck). 

The team is under professional and personal stress, and after the film’s opening scene, we learn why. A member of their team, Jackie (Lina Esco), is murdered in cold blood on Magic City’s humid, rainy night, and they have no clue why. JD, who has a hush-hush relationship with Jackie, is masking his pain. Numa (A Thousand and One’s Teyana Taylor) and Lola (Maria Full of Grace’s Catalina Sandino Moreno) are having trouble making ends meet. Mike (Minari’s Steven Yeun) is constantly in his lieutenant’s ear about unpaid overtime.

It also doesn’t help that Matty (Kyle Chandler), a local DEA agent, is always flaunting the uncapped pay the Feds allow, while Dane’s team works for free, beyond the normal nine-to-five. That’s the carrot the audience is given, so here comes the stick: Dane gets a tip from Crime Stoppers that there’s a couple of hundred thousand dollars in a downtown stash house. He gathers his troops, and they charm their way into Desi’s (The Flash’s Sasha Calle) home, where they discover over twenty million dollars—and supervision in sight. 

The Rip is from Joe Carnahan (The Grey), who rose to prominence with the 2002 Jason Patric and Ray Liotta crime classic Narc. It may have taken some years, but Carnahan has found his way back to what he does best: telling crime stories through interesting lenses and making conventional plot devices feel new again. (Do yourself a favor and book a double feature with this and his 2022 pulpy homage to ’70s crime films, Copshop, an honorable mention on our esteemed Editor-in-Chief David Giannini’s Best Films of 2021 list.)

For one, Carnahan uses tension, tone, and pace as creative weapons. Now, yes, The Rip is much more of a straight genre picture than he has made in a while. However, there is a velocity to the scenes that zip by in a way you can’t quite put your finger on. Watching it back, even moments where the FBI is interrogating Damon’s Dane’s team carry an organic urgency that feels infectious. That’s because his script rarely gives way to exposition that overstays its welcome.

Scenes with Damon and Affleck at each other’s throats feel dangerous, fast, and unstable. While the third act comes together a bit too cleanly, the familiar crime clichés are played with a clever wink and nod to the audience, showing an awareness of plot holes the rest of us would normally question. Yes, seasoned cinephiles will likely spot the main villain a mile away. Yet the tension and tone built through clever plotting will keep most genre fans on the edge of their seats for most of the film.

There are a few details that drag down the picture, like communication with drug cartels, which I found laughable. In addition, when they reveal Jackie’s killer in the third act, they do it in a flashback. The criminal takes off their mask and walks away, as if there were no cameras on every street corner or in the parking lot filled with cars. I mean, have Damon, Affleck, and Carnahan never watched an episode of true crime where CCTV solves more murders than Columbo?

Yes, The Rip is worth watching because it is a smart, popcorn-style streaming film that takes a thoughtful approach to a standard story. (The real-life story it is based on, the real-life Miami River Cops scandal, is bonkers and begging to be made into a feature.) An excellent cast does lift the material, but the story, the devices, and the tension make the picture gripping enough to recommend… and to be thankful for cinematic heroes, since we lack so many at the moment. 

You can stream The Rip exclusively on Netflix starting January 16th!

Grade: B