Let’s get it straight. The Instigators may be the best Pulp Fiction wannabe … of 1997. But it’s 2024, so the very existence of this shaggy dog crime flick is a source of utter bafflement.
For those of you too young to remember, after Quentin Tarantino’s twisted morality tale exploded in 1994, every studio executive was desperate to green light the next talky gangster flick. At its best, that instinct gave us Get Shorty and Out of Sight. At its worst, we got Killing Zoe and The Boondock Saints. But most of these crime caper photocopies were immemorable, unaware of how much Tarantino was channeling Damon Runyon and Elmore Leonard. They got the forced oddness but lacked that zap and zing – and that’s exactly the problem with The Instigators, a movie with a script that may just have dropped out of a wormhole and would have made a lot more sense 25 years ago.
For starters, back then you would have cast Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, but it’s 2024 and so you get Matt Damon and Casey Affleck, which just makes you feel automatically like the producers couldn’t get big brother and so got the next best thing. They play a pair of washed-up nobodies – Damon as Rory, a divorced dad and ex-Marine sad sack, and Affleck as Cobby, a drunk with low-rent mob ties – who get hooked into a hairbrained scheme to shake down the mayor of Boston (a suitably overblown Perlman) on election night. The big bosses have worked out that his coffers will be stuffed with illicit campaign contributions, and who better to send to rob the biggest crook in town than a couple of disposable chowderheads?
Of course the heist goes sideways, and the duo end up in increasingly absurd side quests, bumping into an endless supply of mostly recognizable character actors, and even a celebrity cameo or two. Well, Gronk turns up for a couple of seconds, but that’s good enough.
As criminal love letters to Boston go, well, let’s just say this is hardly The Town, big brother Ben’s grimy depiction of bank robbery in violence-plagued Charlestown. Lackluster and slow even in its supposedly hi-octane chase sequences, much of the blame lies with director Doug Liman. He should know better. After all, his 1999 drug drama Go was one of the last of that Fakenintino catalog, and it’s all the more disappointing after a seeming career renaissance with his gleefully idiotic revved-up remake of Road House. Worse, the forced chemistry between a torpid Damon and an irritable Affleck (who, between flashes of charm, just looks annoyed to be there) coagulates on screen, and a desperate attempt to create some kind of meet-cute between Cobby and Hong Chau as Dr. Donna Rivera, Rory’s shrink, lacks any passion. No one in the talented ensemble can save the low-stakes script by Affleck and City on a Hill scribe Chuck MacLean, especially since Liman seems to be going for a low-key delivery and just ends up with that deathly first table read energy.
But it’s almost a waste of energy to compare it to anything other than the kind of movie it so flagrantly and fitfully emulates. Let’s just say it’s better than 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag, but it’s definitely no Things to do in Denver When You’re Dead.
This article appears in August 9 • 2024.
