“The Rip”: An Atypical Director Delivers a Typical Crime Thriller

Is there any director more confounding than Joe Carnahan?

His first film, “Narc” (2002), was a gritty thriller starring Jason Patric as an undercover cop suffering from PTSD after accidentally shooting a pregnant mom during an arrest; he’s paired with Ray Liotta as a bad lieutenant with a penchant for hurting suspects. With its grainy film stock and jerky handheld shots, it played like a grimier version of a 70s cop drama.

But instead of playing out that thread and positioning himself as a neo-Lumet, Carnahan decided to zig in a zanier direction with his next film, “Smokin’ Aces” (2006), a rambunctious crime-action-comedy mashup that ran like an extra-caffeinated Tarantino pastiche, if that makes any sense: colorful, bloody, and nihilistic.

His next job was a studio gig, a relatively generic remake of “The A-Team.” After that, he zoomed back into “Narc” territory with “The Gray” (2011), in which Liam Neeson and a bunch of other hardboiled actors play oil workers trying to survive a plane crash in the Alaskan wilderness. The film is a two-hour meditation on accepting death; the masterstroke was casting Neeson, who’d recently lost his wife, as a man who’d recently lost his wife. There are moments when he channels such unadulterated grief and rage, it’s an open question whether he’s still acting in the traditional sense:

Then came “Boss Level” (2020) and “Copshop” (2021), in which Carnahan leapt again into “Smokin’ Aces” mode: quips, psychopaths, explosions, blah. I can’t think of another director who engaged in such stylistic whiplash; you can name any number who’ve jumped genres from movie to movie, but usually while sticking to a certain baseline, a signature set of moves.

So as I queued up “The Rip,” Carnahan’s latest film starring Ben Affleck and Matt Damon as a pair of Miami-Dade cops debating whether to rob a stash house, I wondered which version of the director we were going to get. And the answer is: none of the above.

“The Rip” isn’t nearly as grimdark as “Narc” or “The Gray,” and nor is it as bombastic as Carnahan’s other movies. Instead, he keeps himself restrained, interspersing long stints of talking and arguing with the occasional burst of gunplay, all of it shot classically with a minimum of shaky-cam. There’s a fairly predictable flip at the end (in addition to taking pages from the Tarantino playbook at moments, Carnahan is also a big fan of the “Usual Suspects”-style montage twist), and Damon, with his graying goatee and a vaguely menacing air, seems to have fun playing against his public nice-guy image. Keeping most of the movie to a single location, a spooky cul-de-sac in Hialeah, helps jack up the tension.

Bottom line: “The Rip” isn’t a for-the-ages film by any stretch, but it’s a solid crime thriller at a time when those seem in relatively short supply (especially in theaters; “The Rip” is a Netflix exclusive). I’m hoping Carnahan stays in this particular gear for at least another movie or two, because it seems to work for him—and for us.

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Nick Kolakowski is the author of several crime novels, including “Where the Bones Lie”, “Payback is Forever”, „Maxine Unleashes Doomsday“ and „Boise Longpig Hunting Club“ as well as the Love & Bullets trilogy of novellas. His work has been nominated for the Anthony and Derringer awards, and his short story “Scorpions” appeared in The Best Mystery and Suspense 2024. His short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, including Mystery Weekly, Shotgun Honey, Rock and a Hard Place Press, and more.

Just out: RIGHTEOUS TRASH, the third book in what is called the Boise Noir Trilogy. Rock and a Hard Place Press did a masterful job on the cover (as they did with the reissued editions of the first two books in the trilogy, BOISE LONGPIG HUNTING CLUB and RATTLESNAKE RODEO).

RIGHTEOUS TRASH follows Jake, an Iraq War veteran and former bounty hunter, and his gun-running sister Frankie as they try to dig themselves out of a big financial hole the only way they know how—by doing something incredibly insane and possibly deadly. »This time around, the action isn’t restricted to Idaho; there’s also a sequence set in New Orleans that’s a.) based on a real-life incident, if you can believe it, and b.) one of the funnier things I’ve written. The book’s centerpiece is also the craziest robbery I could think of—I had a lot of fun orchestrating that bit of chaos.«

His „Payback is Forever“ (Shotgun Honey 2022) is inspired clearly by the novels of Richard Stark. Our review here (in German). – See also his Hell of a Mess. A Love & Bullets Hookup.

Nick Kolakowski, geboren 1980, aufgewachsen in Washington. D.C., hat Geschichte in Chicago studiert. Er schreibt Romane, Kurzgeschichten, Lyrik und Essays, viele davon über Crime Fiction und verwandte Themen. Seine Texte erscheinen u. a. in der Washington Post, in Shotgun Honey, North American Review, The Evergreen Review, Rust & Months. Kolakowski lebt in New York City. Eine Besprechung des von Parker inspirierten „Payback is Forever“ in unseren Bloody Chops.

Bei Suhrkamp auf Deutsch: Love & Bullets.
His essays with us. 

His website nickkolakowski.com

His column „Smoking Gun“ with us: 
‘Salem’s Lot’ and the Horror of a Stephen King Adaptation
(27) „Rebel Ridge“: Calmly Burn the Whole Thing Down
‘Monsieur Spade’ and the Faustian Bargain
John Woo is Remaking ‘The Killer.’ But Why?
The Newest ‘Ripley’ Series is Stunning and Flawed
‘Sugar’: Not the Neo-Noir Revival We Need
(3) Moral Redemption in Noir: Is It Possible?
(4) What Makes Jack Reacher Tick?
(5) ‘True Detective: Night Country’ Tries to Make the Familiar into Something New
(6) Is David Fincher’s ‘The Killer’ a Comedy? 
(7) Rewatching ‘Drive’: Gosling as Noir’s Apex Predator
(8) Elmore Leonard  – City Primeval
(9) Cormac McCarthy Used Crime Fiction’s Tropes to Make Masterpieces
(10) Parker: Donald Westlake’s One Amazing Trick
(11) Cosby, Winslow, Pruitt: Three Heavy-Hitting Thillers for Summer
(12) Weed-Based Crime Thrillers are Going Up in Smoke
(13) ‘The Last of Us’: Crime in the Post-Apocalypse 
(14) What Made “Glass Onion” and “Knives Out” So Popular?
(15) Jordan Harper’s One-Two Punch of Crime Fiction Deserves a Wide Audience
(16) ‘True Detective’ Season 2: Was It Better Than We All Thought?
(17) From ‘Touch of Evil’ to ‘True Detective,’ Long Shots are Crime Films’ Secret Weapon
(18) Michael Mann, again: What Michael Mann Teaches Us About Enduring Crime Fiction
(19) „Heat 2“ – How Do You Craft a Sequel to a Masterpiece?
(20) 4 Ways Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” Novel Stands Out From the Film.
(21) On „Heat“: Manhunter Takes Down Thief: How Michael Mann’s Early Career Led to ‘Heat’
(22) The Most Honest Nihilism – on „The Way of the Gun“
(23) No, Time to Die – The latest James Bond movie digs into the fatalism at the iconic spy’s core.
(24) Cormac McCarthy’s Overlooked Masterpiece? – „The Councelor“
(25) „Nightmare Alley“ – How Guillermo del Toro’s Film Alters a Masterpiece Noir Novel
(26) David Cronenberg – The Carnal Crime of “A History of Violence” and “Eastern Promises”
(27) With Parker, Donald E. Westlake Pulled Off Crime Fiction’s Most Spectacular Magic Trick
(28) Guy Ritchie’s Return to Crime Films is Worth Watching
(29) Alex Garland’s ‘Civil War’: Hint of Things to Come?
(30) David Lynch and the Beautiful Weirdness
(31) ‘Where the Bones Lie’ and the Engine of California Noir
(32) “Den of Thieves 2”: Stealing from the Best
(33) White Lotus and the Gentle Art of Hating Your Protagonists
(34) Neal Stephenson
(35) Where is Storytelling Going?
(36) ‚She Rides Shotgun‘ and the Making of Legends
(37) Jack Bauer, ‘24’ and the Great Memory-Hole
(38) How “Play Dirty” Did Richard Stark’s Parker Dirty
(39) ‘The Lowdown,’ Jim Thompson and the Ghosts of Noir