The Instigators review — Boston buds have a pretty good time

Directed by Doug Liman | Written by Chuck MacLean and Casey Affleck | 101 min | ▲▲▲△△ | Apple TV +

There’s a simple pleasure in a genre picture put together by people with such professionalism in the making that even a certain, say, predictability in the beats or routine in its structure doesn’t detract from the sheer fun of it.

The Instigators is in a lot of ways a standard buddy comedy slash heist picture about a couple of desperate Beantown no-hopers who steal from a corrupt politician and spend the rest of their time a half-step from death or incarceration while still trying to land the loot. With a blockbuster veteran like Liman behind the camera and this impeccable cast in front of it, the picture provides a whole lot to enjoy — with expectations measured.

The movie was produced by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s Artists Equity production shingle, which has done some good work — don’t miss Air from last year if you haven’t seen it — with a script by the younger Affleck and a dude named MacLean, who must be a buddy from the old days: the IMDB says he grew up in the Boston suburb of Quincy.

The movie’s about Cobby (Casey Affleck) and Rory (Damon), both with serious personal problems. Rory is a divorced former Marine carrying debt and a strained relationship with his son who seeks therapy from a Dr Riviera (Hong Chao), Cobby’s an ex-con and alcoholic. Cobby and Rory meet up for a job with Scalvo (Jack Harlow), Mr Besegai (Michael Stuhlbarg, fantastically rage-filled) and Ritchie Dechico (Alfred Molina). Those two older guys running things bring echoes of Bernie Rose and Nino from Drive, especially since the guy who played Nino, Ron Perlman, is present and accounted for here as Mayor Miccelli, campaigning for reelection and someone who’s made a career of dirty deals and dirty money.

The job, stealing from the Mayor on election night, goes spectacularly badly, leaving a cop dead. Cobby and Rory are on the run from both the crooks who hired them and their catspaws, as well as the many law enforcement organizations looking for justice for their fallen colleague.

Now, amongst the supporting players we’ve also got Paul Walter Hauser, Toby Jones, and as a cop named Frank Toomey who drives a tank around town, Ving Rhames. Limon knows well enough to introduce the legendary Rhames by shooting him from behind, evoking his star-making role in Pulp Fiction.

The vibe here is distinctly shaggy. The hang-out, laid-back approach occasionally interrupted with action set-pieces makes it hard to take very much of it seriously — the comedy and PG violence (some of the explosions created with distinctly cut-rate CGI) tend to diminish the stakes. Casey Affleck’s Cobby is the wiseacre, getting 90 percent of the sharpest gags, never stopping running his mouth even when he’s been shot. The movie’s highlight is when the plot engineers a meeting between our two scofflaws and Dr Riviera. You hope the three of them will go on the road, but their time together is brief.

And that meeting brings up The Instigators biggest flaw. As guys who don’t know each other, Affleck and Damon have a startling ease together. You could put that down to having grown up in the same neighbourhood round the same kinds of people, but we know their chemistry is obviously related to the fact they’ve known each other offscreen since they were kids, as well as starred together in movies like Good Will Hunting, Gerry, and Ocean’s Eleven. But that’s actually a plus, not the minus.

The minus is that Cobby and Rory *too* much alike. When Hong Chao joins them on the run, finally the movie achieves an oil-and-water, Odd Couple energy that you wish it had throughout. I know it’s a mistake to review a movie for what you wish it was rather than what it is, but if Damon’s character had just been a little more Felix Unger and Affleck’s a little more Oscar Madison, or Jack Walsh and Jonathan Mardukas, to evoke an obvious antecedent here, Midnight Run, this movie would’ve been a whole lot more memorable.