If you’re a fan of buddy comedies or heist movies, Apple TV+ has the perfect weekend watch for you. The streaming service’s latest effort, The Instigators, distils the key elements of these classic genres while throwing in a welcome curveball or two of its very own.
Starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck as Rory and Cobby, the film follows this mismatched pair of amateur thieves forced to go on the run when their foray into the criminal world doesn’t go as planned. Somewhat dysfunctionally, they’re joined in this frantic race from the law by Rory’s therapist (played by Asteroid City’s Hong Chau), who provides a clinical voice of reason in the midst of the chaos to hilarious effect.
I was fortunate enough to chat with Damon, Affleck, and Chau recently to find out what makes The Instigators stand apart from the traditional heist movie formula.
A Staggering Lack of Diplomacy
From the jump, you can tell that Matt Damon and Casey Affleck have developed the kind of camaraderie that can only be built through decades of friendship — for those who’ve been living under a rock, Damon had his first big Hollywood break back in ‘97 with Good Will Hunting, a collaborative effort with his current co-star’s big brother, Ben, which secured the pair the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
When asked how this long-term relationship impacted their dynamic while working on the film, Affleck starts to explain, saying, “It’s a buddy comedy…” before Damon eagerly interjects, “And we’re buddies!”
The pair’s closeness means they can work together in a way that requires less coddling of one another’s egos and more blunt communication about what does or doesn’t work in any particular scene. According to Damon, this made The Instigators a welcome change from Hollywood’s standard ego-stroking approach.
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“We’ve been in each other’s lives for 43 years, and very much like when I work with Ben, there’s a staggering lack of diplomacy, creatively speaking, which actually saves a lot of time,” the 53-year-old says of his 49-year-old co-star. “In our business, we’ve created a whole language around protecting people’s feelings and their egos. When they make a suggestion that maybe you don’t like, there’s a whole way long-winded way to say, ‘I don’t want to do that.’ With us, we just abandon all of that.”
This ‘lack of diplomacy’ is only further emphasised by the presence of director Doug Liman, with whom Damon previously worked on the classic thriller The Bourne Identity.
“He’s very blunt,” Damon reveals. “You know, I’ve seen it put actors off with Doug sometimes because he doesn’t really have a filter. It’s something I’ve always loved with him because we just attack the problem in a very real way without our egos being involved. Knowing that the real priority is this thing we’re trying to make together, and we all want it to be as good as it can be.”
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A Different Kind of Heist Movie
This dedication to the job at hand is clear as you watch The Instigators, a film in which everyone appears to be giving it their all (we’ll get onto the staggering supporting cast shortly). There’s a hard-bitten work ethic that emanates from the screen, seamlessly aligning with the film’s hard-as-nails characters and Boston setting.
This provides a stark contrast to the more glamorous approach to heist movies that we’ve all grown accustomed to, thanks to films like The Italian Job and Ocean’s Eleven, the latter of which both Damon and Affleck appeared.
“I think heist movies usually have a bunch of clever twists and turns, where the cool characters are executing the heist in ways that the audience didn’t expect,” explains Affleck, who also helmed the film’s script alongside Chuck MacLean.
”They’re sort of getting over the hurdles of the heist in very smart ways and making it look good. These guys, that’s not what’s happening, and they don’t have any great ideas, and they aren’t that cool in the way they execute their heist,” he says.
“There’s something else going on, which is that Matt’s character is carrying a lot of guilt about his relationship to his son, and wanting to pay down a debt. And my character is sort of lonely in life and can’t figure out why he doesn’t have a friend. So those are the objectives of the two characters, not, ‘Hey, we need to steal a billion dollars from the bank.’”
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Making It Up On the Fly
While this might make them sound like something of a downer, it’s fairer to say Rory and Cobby possess a thick-skinned, sardonic charm. They’re quite endearing as they take a ramshackle, improvisational approach to their heist that couldn’t be further removed from George Clooney’s Danny Ocean and Co. According to Hong Chau, this make-it-up-as-you-go spirit also filtered through to the on-set approach to shooting, with the script being treated more as a rough guideline than a movie bible.
“There was a lot of improvisation that went on on on set when we were shooting,” Chau says. “Even though Casey Affleck is a co-writer, he was very happy to just throw the script out of the window and encouraged us to improvise. He was actually the one that was doing something different with each take, and so I just followed his lead.”
As Damon elaborates, this approach enabled the team to get the most out of every opportunity the script presented: “You go to work with the script, and you know, you’ve got a battle plan when you go to work, but usually you end up doing a lot of improvisation, and a lot of people are putting ideas forward and suggestions, and you really try to mine the scenes for everything that you can.”
An Embarrassment of Riches
Naturally, to make this approach work, you need a certain calibre of talent in front of the camera. Fortunately, The Instigators’ cast has one of the deepest benches you’ll see on screen all year. It feels like every role is inhabited by one world-class character actor or another. From Alfred Molina and Toby Jones to Michael Stuhlbarg and Ron Perlman, the cast is stacked. Jack Harlow even turns in a surprisingly convincing turn as a dimwitted thug. Anything to keep him from making more music, I suppose.
With a cast this fun, the film’s hour and 41 minutes flies past, and I, for one, would welcome a return to the world that Damon, Affleck, Chau, and the rest of The Instigators cast and crew have helped to create. When asked if we’ll get a sequel with Rory, Cobby, and Dr. Rivera at its centre, Chau exclaims, “I would, in a heartbeat, sign up for another Doug Liman action movie.” Here’s hoping she gets the chance.
The Instigators is streaming now on Apple TV+.
