Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Instigators’ on Apple TV+, an Action Lark Starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck as Bickering Criminals

The names, lord, the NAMES. The Instigators (now streaming on Apple TV+) has SO MANY of them: Doug Liman (Go, the Road House remake, The Bourne Identity, Edge of Tomorrow, etc.) directing leads Matt Damon and Casey Affleck, with supporting help from (deep breath) Hong Chau, Michael Stuhlbarg, Alfred Molina, Paul Walter Hauser, Toby Jones, Ving Rhames, Ron Perlman and Jack Harlow, with Rob Gronkowski (!) making a cameo as himself. There’s so many heavy-hitters here, it’s like an American Olympic basketball team destined to steamroll its opponents. Strange then, how the movie got a brief, limited theatrical release before a relatively unceremonious streaming debut. Is that a sign of no confidence? I wonder if… it’s not that great? Against the odds, apparently? Hmm. Let’s investigate.

THE INSTIGATORS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Rory (Damon) is going through some stuff. Depression. Thoughts of suicide. At least he’s working through it with his VA therapist, Dr. Rivera (Chau), who tries to pry more out of him than just “I f— things up.” He walks out of there and the good thing is, he keeps on walking instead of throwing in the towel. The bad thing is, he’s so desperate for $32,480 to pay off back alimony and child support in order to get to see his son, he agrees to commit a crime for the first time in his sad life. Before we get to the details of the sketchy horsepuckey smash-and-grab, we need to introduce his partners on the job: Cobby (Affleck), a sad-ass sack who gets the neighbor kid to blow into his breathalyzer so he can use his motorcycle, and Scalvo (Harlow), who’s the equivalent of Jack Harlow’s halftime performance at the Detroit Lions’ 2023 Thanksgiving game, which is to say, he’s rather underwhelming as a character.

Anyway. Mr. Besegai (Stuhlbarg) and his crime-boss pal Richie (Molina) want Cobby, Rory and Scalvo – and I’m interrupting myself to address the what’s with these stupid-ass names question that’s on your lips right now, and the answer is, the movie’s set in Boston, or BAHHstin if you please, which is a place where unsavory guys like this all have dumb hockey-player nicknames. Anyway anyway, the crook bosses have a plan, they always have a plan, and it’s for the three idiots to heist the crooked-ass Mayor Miccelli’s (Perlman) $500-a-head cash-only election-victory party. Rory is such a rube newb, he literally takes notes while they hash out the plan. Whatta maroon. But he’s not the problem here. No, Miccelli actually loses, and when Rory and Cobby and Scalvo get to the safe, all that’s in there is the contents of the ugliest Chippendale’s jock: a couple of cold nickels and BALLS.

Well, shit. And without giving anything away, it only gets fackin’ worse from there, just EXTRA snafuey, as dudes are gunned down and Cobby and Rory find themselves on the run with a MacGuffin in their possession, a bracelet belonging to the mayor that acts as a key to open a third-act plot device. Dr. Rivera gets wrapped up in the chase because she’s hopelessly devoted to a running sort-of-joke about never giving up on a patient who’s suicidal, which means even in the midst of things getting all hairy and dangerous and explodey, she still asks Rory how he feels about all this. On their tail is a dopey fixer (Hauser) and a Miccelli-devotee cop (Rhames) who drives around town in a literal tank, and ends up ramming a fire truck that Cobby and Rory steal, because you can’t get through a movie like this without the type of chaotic mass destruction that turns half of Boston into finely siftable scree. Whether our guys survive all this isn’t the question, it’s whether you can live through their unending “clever” squabbling.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: So as I’m watching The Instigators, I says to myself, I says, “All this action-comedy craziness and verbal back-’n’-forth reminds me of Midnight Run.” Come to find out, Affleck, who co-wrote the screenplay with Chuck Maclean, was inspired by Midnight Run. Go figyah! So I say The Instigators is like Midnight Run crossed with The Town. But I know Midnight Run. I know it very well. Maybe a top 20 movie for me, all-time. And The Instigators is no Midnight Run.

Performance Worth Watching: We should be hoisting up a talent like Stuhlbarg, Chau, Rhames, Molina or Perlman, but this movie doesn’t give any of them enough to do. So, against the odds, the perennial sourpuss Affleck ends up being the funniest person here. Not a lie. Legit laughed at him several times. He seems to have given himself all the best lines. 

Memorable Dialogue: Miccelli has a legit question for our protags:

Miccelli: Are you outta your f—in’ minds?

Cobby: We are in treatment.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: The Instigators frequently feels like a bunch of junk tossed in a bag. Some of it’s funny. Is that enough? Yeah. That’s enough. Barely. It has some political and mental-health quasi-thematic plot fodder in it, but none of it should be taken seriously even for a half-second. It’s a cynical farce that’s a bickering-buddy comedy, an action lark and a heist caper all mushed together. It’s utterly ridiculous. As Rory and Cobby’s situation gets worse and worse and worse, their funnyguy banter only intensifies. It stretches credibility like size 3T briefs on a Tibetan ox. To call it far-fetched is to imply that it’s in the very neighborhood of fetchedness, which it very much is not. (To look at that luminous cast and call it a near-colossal waste of talent isn’t quite so far-fetched; it’s actually a fairly compelling argument, especially for a Stuhlbarg stan like myself.)

But again, I laughed, and that’s not nothing. There were moments where I felt myself doing the math (Liman + Damon + Chau + Stuhlbarg = fun, goddammit!) and performing the mental gymnastics necessary to will myself to like the film, but eventually, it ended up convincing me of its own accord. I appreciated the against-type casting of Damon as the bummer and Affleck as the wisecracker (think Aykroyd and Belushi in Neighbors, but not nearly as wickedly ingenious), but could also be convinced that the movie would be better if they stayed in their lanes. I appreciated the big, dumb skewering of political corruption. I appreciated the ludicrous irony of a psychotherapist following her patient into moronically dangerous situations (Rory and Dr. Rivera agree that she’ll be a “hostage,” thus acquitting her of being an accomplice). None of it makes any sense, to the point where you start to wonder if the film aims to spoof multiple genres as half-assedly as possible, but I assert that’s by design. If you accept that line of reasoning, you just might enjoy yourself.

Our Call: This year’s The Fall Guy and Road House did the action-comedy thing much better than The Instigators, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth your time. Final tally: 51 funny, 49 total frickin’ mess. Guess the numbers say STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.