For twenty years, fans have wanted Matt Damon and Doug Liman working together again. The Bourne Identity launched both of their careers in 2002, and The Instigators, now the number one movie on Apple TV+, is their reunion: a Boston heist comedy that Damon's own production company handed to Liman as a script. What the two of them made is not the sleek, clockwork caper that reunion might promise. It is a shaggy comedy about two men who are bad at crime, and it cares far more about why they need the money than about whether they ever get it.
A Heist Built Backward
Rory, played by Damon, is a broke and depressed father who is behind on everything, including what he owes for his son. Cobby, played by Affleck, is a motormouth ex-con who cannot stop talking himself deeper into trouble. A local crime boss points them at what sounds like an easy score, the untraceable election-night cash of a corrupt Boston mayor, and neither man has the skill to pull it off. That gap is the joke, and Liman treats it as the entire design of the film. The robbery goes wrong almost on contact. The take is not what they were promised, a stubborn cop refuses their bribe, and the two of them spend most of the movie just trying to survive their own bad plan.
Liman shot the movie in thirty-six days, tearing through Boston the way he once tore through his scrappy indie beginnings, fast and loose, with tanks and fire trucks barreling down real streets. He even rewrote the finale to move it into Boston's actual City Hall, staging a chase through the mayor's office inside the building where the city actually runs. The result has a scuffed, ground-level texture. These are not thieves gliding through a marble vault. They are two locals crashing through their own city and breaking most of what they touch.
The Getaway Driver Is a Therapist
The best running joke is who ends up in the escape car. When the job collapses, Rory and Cobby flee with an unlikely passenger: Rory's therapist, Dr. Rivera, played by Hong Chau, swept into the getaway in the middle of a session. Most heist movies recruit a safecracker or a wheelman. This one recruits the hero's shrink, and that single choice tells you what story you are watching. The crime is a delivery system for two damaged men who badly need someone to talk to.
The supporting bench runs deep with character actors who know how to land a small scene, among them Michael Stuhlbarg, Paul Walter Hauser, Alfred Molina, Ving Rhames, Toby Jones, and Ron Perlman. Their presence signals that Liman was assembling an ensemble comedy wearing the coat of a thriller, where the pleasure comes from watching good actors bounce off one another more than from watching a plan click into place.
What the Money Cannot Fix
I will keep the late turns vague, since the fun is in the scramble, but what matters is where it all comes to rest. The dirty money that everyone schemes and kills for never turns into anyone's happy ending. When it finally surfaces, the mayor's replacement simply pockets it, the same machine changing hands without missing a beat. The system that produced the cash keeps the cash.
That leaves Rory and Cobby with the only prizes the film actually values, and both are small and human. Rory works up the nerve to show up at his son's hockey game and watch from the stands. Cobby knocks on Dr. Rivera's door and asks, sincerely this time, about that date. A robber story that ends with a man sitting quietly in a rink, hoping his kid glances up, has told you all along that it was never a robber story. It is the same discovery another recent film reached with a real-life thief, a man whose story turned out to belong to who he was far more than to what he stole. The Instigators also shares a streak with another recent crime comedy in which a blue-collar outsider claws at a fortune that was never clean, though Liman swaps that film's body count for a car chase and a flicker of conscience.
Is It Worth the Ride?
The Instigators is not top-tier Liman, and the reviews said as much, landing under half positive on the major aggregators. The plot is thin, the stakes stay low, and the middle wanders whenever the movie stops to explain itself. If you want a heist that tightens like a fist, you are in the wrong theater. What it offers instead is hangout pleasure: two likable stars with real history, a deep and funny cast, and a city photographed with affection. Damon and Affleck carry the easy rhythm of men who have known each other since they were kids, which they have.
That ease is why the film climbed to the top of the Apple TV+ chart this month, a couple of years after a quiet theatrical run. It plays even better at home, where a loose, funny, slightly ragged caper is exactly the sort of thing you want on a weeknight. Go in expecting a great heist and you will feel shortchanged. Go in for two Boston lifers talking their way into and out of trouble, and you will have a very good time.