Quietly Watching

  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 Lim...