Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative. However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, though better options may be on the horizon. (Note: Anything in bold blue [some may look near purple] is a link to something more in the review.)
My reviews’ premise: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”
(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the song’s name)
The Instigators (Doug Liman) rated R 101 min.
Here’s the trailer:
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If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy). To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
What Happens: This all takes place in contemporary Boston (along with nearby Quincy, MA) where down-on-his-luck Rory (Matt Damon) desperately needs $32,480 for school costs and personal gifts for his son, trying to make amends given his distancing from the kid due to his divorce, so he joins forces with ex-con Cobby Murphy (Casey Affleck) to pull off a scheme headed by mobsters Besegai (Michael Stuhlbarg) and Dechico (Alfred Molina) to make a haul from robbing a huge election-night celebration of expected-to-be-re-elected corrupt Mayor Joseph Miccelli (Ron Perlman) who’ll be accepting lots of cash bribes. Rory, Cobby, and the gangsters’ guy, Scalvo (Jack Harlow), sneak into the wharf celebration only to find it’s still full of kitchen help and guests, so first our bungling outlaws herd the staff into the freezer, then find there’s massive complications because mayoral-challenger Mark Choi (Ronnie Cho) has won the election, Miccelli refuses to concede, the safe’s already empty, so our thieves find Miccelli and a few close associates and rob them instead of whatever cash and valuables they’re carrying—including a bracelet of Miccellli’s which will become extremely important later. However, the Chief of Police shows up, gunfire’s exchanged leaving the Chief and Scalvo dead, Cobby wounded in the shoulder. He and Rory make a getaway in a stolen armored car but hesitate to open the back to grab some cash with the fear there’s a shooter stationed inside. They’re right because when they do carefully open the back door shots ring out so they run away, hide at bartender Kelly’s (André De Shields) home (he’s a friend of Cobby’s), appeal to Dechico for help, but instead he sends Booch (Paul Walter Hauser) and Colani (Scout Backus) to kill them. Our would-be-thieves stay on the lam, but now they’re also hunted by Miccellli’s Special Operations Unit guy, Frank Toomey (Ving Rhames), because that bracelet has the combination for the ex-Mayor’s office safe where there’s lots of cash and enough incriminating evidence against him.
Booch and Colani come to where Rory and Cabby are, but they’ve cut the gas line so a shot sets the place ablaze in an explosion as our protagonists escape. Rory brings Cobby to his therapist, Dr. Donna Rivera (Hong Chau), as she’s also a medical doctor who can patch him up. She then becomes their hostage after calling the cops so she has to escape with them in her car in a wild chase with the police. They go to Kelly’s empty bar, but Toomey shows up, leaves with Rivera and the bracelet while cops surround the bar so Cobby cuts a gas line again, blowing the place up. Next, Rory and Cobby steal firemen’s uniforms, set off alarms at City Hall so they can get to Miccelli’s office to grab the loot in the safe (Cobby memorized the numbers on the bracelet) where they also meet Miccelli’s lawyer, Alan Flynn (Toby Jones), who agrees to testify against his boss, gives them hard drives with the incriminating evidence. Police arrive and open fire (wounding Cobby in the same shoulder), Rivera escapes with Flynn, Rory and Cobby push the safe out of a window so the crowd below scrambles for the cash, then Rory and Cobby escape (what else?) in a fire truck but are caught by Toomey who takes them into custody. ⇒In another plot twist, Besegai and Dechico (remember them?) go into the woods, attempt to get to Canada on foot, even as Miccelli moves toward the same destination but he’s arrested; Choi becomes Mayor, accepts the hard drives from Rory and Cobby with access to $100 million in untraceable funds so he frees our “heroes.” As this all wraps up, Rory’s able to reconnect with his son, there’s an implication of a growing connection between Cobby and Rivera, while Besegai and Dechico are found frozen to death in those woods.⇐
So What? Lately, I’ve been quite lucky when choosing something (from streaming options, no theatricals as COVID’s really roaring again in my San Francisco Bay area) to review for this blog, with four 4 stars-rated (by me) releases—Fancy Dance (Erica Tremblay; review in our July 17, 2024 posting), Memory (Michel Franco; July 24, 2024 posting), Love Lies Bleeding (Rose Glass; July 31, 2024 posting), Daddio (Christy Hall; August 8, 2024 posting)—as subject matter for my most recent commentaries, but, as always, an impressive streak will ultimately come to an end (I mean, even all-time champion gymnast Simone Biles got "only" 3 gold medals at this year’s Paris Olympics, but her other win was for silver while my latest choice would be more like an aluminum medal, if there were such a thing). Given my recently-reported time commitments to medical procedures for troublesome kidney stones (all seems to be going well now, fortunately), I was a bit pressed for options to watch for this week’s review so I again trusted (works sometimes) my local San Francisco Chronicle critic, Mick LaSalle, to offer what seemed to be a trustworthy choice (“ ‘The Instigators’ is unremarkable but consistently amusing, and makes you feel like everyone showed up at the set expecting a party. This sense of a good time is reflected in the grand-scale performances of the featured and supporting players, including people like Alfred Molina and Michael Stuhlbarg — people with big careers who didn’t have to be here, but who apparently decided they didn’t want to miss out.“) without time to compare his option to the Rotten Tomatoes reviews (more on that in the next section here), which might have given me pause had I had more opportunity to do further, probing research.
With all of that in place, though, I watched The Instigators, with one of the best aspects of that experience being I don’t have to contemplate too much on what to say about this movie because there really isn’t much except I was intrigued anyway by a cast I’m familiar with, headed by Damon and Affleck, with a script written by Affleck and Chuck Maclean (with Damon and Ben Affleck among the producers—I guess Ben didn’t have much time to do anything else with this movie given how he’s preoccupied with divorcing from Jennifer Lopez … again), so I though it would be worth an entertainment investment. In truth, it sort of was, but I wouldn’t be quite so complimentary as LaSalle is. There are moments that are rather enjoyable, but overall it just seems repetitiously-silly, so my apologies for wasting a review on this unremarkable movie that I just cannot fully recommend.
Bottom Line Final Comments: The Instigators opened in “select theaters” on August 2, 2024 (so “select” I can find no box-office info on it, nor does it seem to be playing anywhere in my area), then became available for streaming one week later, free to Apple TV+ subscribers (although you can try the platform for free for a week, then sign up for $9.99 monthly if you wish). You’re not going to get much encouragement from the OCCU, though, as the Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews are a meager 41%, the Metacritic average score is surprisingly a bit higher at 48%, so maybe you’d like to hear from someone not even as enthused as Mr. LaSalle. How about Robert Daniels at RogerEbert.com, whose MC score is a flat 0: “This Apple TV heist flick is underwritten, dreary, tedious, inert, and without any stakes. I almost hesitate to write too much about it because this soulless dreck feels so unworthy of adding blemishes to the white page. […] Despite the stacked cast, the premise is thin. [¶] ‘The Instigators’ commits the unconscionable sin of somehow underusing every one of its actors. […] The film contradicts itself, takes little interest in its characters, and appears to only desire to provide its audience a stiff nap. 'The Instigators' arouses no memorable scenes, feelings, jokes or profundity. At most, it’s a collection of moving images.” Damn!
But, you can please some of the people some of the time, like Collider’s Tania Hussain whose MC score soared up to 80% (the bold words in this quote are hers) “[…] the Apple TV+ production expertly blends the perfect mix of humor and action with some complex nuances for an entry that is one of the year’s most surprising comedies. […] But even when it gets messy, Liman manages to maintain a steady, smart pace and coherent narrative. The director, who steered Damon more than two decades ago on The Bourne Identity, creates a new world for the actor that never once feels redundant. As a true underdog story that is disarmingly tender, The Instigators might not keep you on the edge of your seat, but it does operate as an exciting action-packed heist with pitch-black comedy you’ll sincerely come to love. […] it is a smart and punchy heist buddy comedy that knows exactly how to keep it light without ever losing its bite. Thanks to a witty script and a charming cast led by Damon and Affleck, The Instigators is a fun heist film with heart that blends the right dose of humor, action, and emotion for a comedy you can watch again and again.” Or ... a big maybe not!
While I found this movie to be mildly amusing some of the time I’d spend my “again and again” options on my standard tactic of a review-ending Musical Metaphor, which this time will be from Genesis, “That’s All” (on the 1983 Genesis album), at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vzyn 60Zns-E&list=RDVzyn60Zns-E&start_radio=1, an idea that suddenly came to me when I awoke in the middle of the night a few days ago. While the song’s about a relationship not working although the singer wants it to, I do have a strange sense that it also oddly-enough refers, in some instances at least, to the clunky friendship between Rory and Cobby: “I could leave but I won’t go / It’d be easier I know / I can’t feel a thing from my head down to my toes / So why does it always seem to be / Me looking at you, you looking at me / It’s always the same, it’s just a shame, that’s all.” In the end, I’d rather see this 4:22 minutes video than another round of 101 minutes with the movie, but if it seems intriguing to you to watch these adventures with Damon and Affleck, please do help yourself.
SHORT TAKES
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
Possible options for your profound consideration: (1) Some suggestions for 2024 "Must Watch Movies"; (2) IMDb's 5 Things to Watch This Week; (3) Variety's 22 Best Movies New to Streaming to watch in August 2024; (4) 28 movie mistakes now considered to be marvelous.
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