The Instigators: A Review - A Boston Bro Bore

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A lifeless and laugh-less Boston-based heist comedy that is not the least bit interesting or entertaining.

The Instigators, starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck, tells the tale of Rory and Cobby, two mismatched, down on their luck, sad sack Bostonians who get hired to pull off a heist.

The film, which is directed by Doug Liman and was co-written by Casey Affleck, is currently streaming on Apple TV+ - which is maybe the worst designed streaming service in the history of mankind…a fact that no doubt leaves Steve Jobs twisting and turning in his grave.

Speaking of twisting, turning and graves, The Instigators is best described as a comedy-heist movie, although it isn’t the least bit funny and the heist isn’t remotely compelling.  

The Instigators is as middling as middling can be as it is a lifeless, mostly charmless, gratingly predictable exercise.

The failure of this film is somewhat baffling as it is chock full of acting talent. Besides Damon and Affleck there’s Paul Walter Hauser (one of the best and one of my favorite actors), Hong Chau, Michael Stuhlberg, Ron Perlman, Alfred Molina, Ving Rhames and Toby Jones.

Despite this solid cast the acting is, frankly, mostly dreadful. Perlman, in particular, seems to be in another movie entirely as his performance is unconscionably cartoonish.

Everyone else seems to be just going through the motions as there isn’t a real person to be found on-screen for the duration.

Casey Affleck and Damon too seem to be painting by numbers as they play an emotionally distant wise cracking, Boston smart ass with a heart of gold who teams with emotionally traumatized and distant Boston dad with a heart of gold. Yawn.

This is well-trod ground for both of these guys and it definitely feels that way watching this movie as neither of them seem to be the least bit engaged and are only cashing in on their tired, well-worn Boston personas.

One final note regarding the cast, and that is regarding Jack Harlow. Harlow plays a criminal named Scalvo and I just don’t get it with this guy. I genuinely don’t understand who this Harlow guy is, where he comes from or why they are trying to make him into an actor or a movie star. I saw him in the remake of White Men Can’t Jump and had the same feeling. I just don’t get it at all. Can we please just remove Jack Harlow from public life? Please.

As for the directing, Doug Liman seems to be just as disengaged as the cast. The film is listless and flat and never gains any momentum - dramatic, comedic, or otherwise.

There’s a big Limen-esque car chase while Petula Clark’s hit song “Downtown” plays and you know it’s supposed to be the action comedy centerpiece of the film and a major highlight but it is decidedly lackluster, underwhelming and cinematically flaccid…as is the entirety of the movie.

That car chase is Liman play-acting at being Doug Liman – whose famous car chase in The Bourne Identity is a cinema classic, just like Damon and Affleck are play-acting at being deviations of their more famous and successful Boston characters from Good Will Hunting and Manchester-by-the-Sea.

Ultimately, The Instigators is an empty and fruitless cinematic endeavor that lacks both comedy and cool. Nothing matters in this movie because nothing is even remotely real. The stakes are never heightened because the characters are never clearly defined beyond stereotype and caricature.

The Instigators is a product of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s production company Artists Equity, which is a bad sign for that endeavor going forward. The company’s first film, Air, which starred Damon and was directed by Ben Affleck, showed some promise, but The Instigators is a major step back.

If Damon and Affleck want to be real producers who bring meaningful change to the film industry, they have to make films that matter. And the only films that matter are films that are very good, or very successful, or both. The instantly forgettable The Instigators is none of the above.

This is the type of film that you should be able to mindlessly watch and get a few chuckles from…unfortunately The Instigators can’t even muster the energy to be mindless, yet fun, entertainment. It’s a dull, poorly designed and constructed vanity project that no one, not even the people in it or who made it, really gives a shit about. And neither should you.

©2024

White Men Can't Jump (Hulu): A Review - A Flagrant and Fragrant Foul of a Basketball Movie

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 1.25 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. This rotten remake has no redeeming value or reason to exist.

Back in the old, dilapidated, smoke and championship banner filled Boston Garden, the dynastic Boston Celtics of Bill Russell, John Havlicek, Dave Cowens and Larry Bird had the greatest of home court advantages because the famed parquet floor on which they played had numerous dead spots. These dead spots would greatly reduce or eliminate the bounce of the ball thus making dribbling a much less automatic action. The Celtics took great advantage of this court abnormality by funneling unsuspecting opponents to dribble into the dead spots and thus either turn the ball over or slow their attack.

The Celtics made the unwise decision to move out of the charming, rat-infested old Boston Garden in 1995 and left their dead spot parquet advantage, and their mystical, magical, luck of the Irish mojo, behind. Their new home, the corporate, cold mausoleum known as TD Garden, has no such advantageous anomalies, and in turn has only produced just one Celtic championship banner in its near thirty-year existence…a stark contrast to the 16 championship banners the team won during their 48 years playing at the old Garden.

Which brings us to the new White Men Can’t Jump movie which premiered on Friday on the streaming service Hulu. The film, a remake of the 1992 Ron Shelton basketball comedy, reminded me of the old Boston Garden not because it is worthy of championship banners, but because it is so riddled with dead spots it has no bounce to it at all.  

The film, which follows the trials and tribulations of two basketball has-beens, Kamal and Jeremy, desperate for one last touch of hoops glory, is written by Kenya Barris, directed by something called Calmatic, and stars Sinqua Walls and rapper Jack Harlow. The end result of this third-rate group of moviemaking wannabes is a vacant, vapid and hollow shadow of the 1992 version which starred Wesley Snipes, Woody Harrelson and Rosie Perez.

To be clear I am not one of those people who is repulsed by this new film because I adored the original. The truth is I hated the original White Men Can’t Jump. The main reason for that was that Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes were embarrassingly bad at basketball. They couldn’t even remotely fake being able to play…and as someone who did play and who was a huge fan of the sport, I found that a hurdle much too great to overcome.

The good news is that this new version features marginally better, but still not great, basketball, but that doesn’t overcome the astounding lack of chemistry and the charisma deficiency of the two lead actors, Sinqua Walls and Jack Harlow.

Snipes and Harrelson lacked basketball ability, but what they didn’t lack was chemistry and charisma. Walls and Harlow on the other hand can somewhat simulate playing the game but have all the spark of two bodies lying next to each other in refrigerated drawers at the morgue.

Harlow, who if you don’t know is a famous rapper – and yes, I still find the notion of white rappers to be just as cringey as you do, need not worry about quitting his day job and heading to Hollywood to be the next white Will Smith, as God knows the black one is already white enough.

Walls at least played basketball in college at the University of San Francisco – where Bill Russell won two NCAA championships before leading the Celtics to 11 NBA titles…but unfortunately for Walls and for us, he is no Bill Russell on the basketball court or Wesley Snipes in front of the camera. He is a rather dull, one-dimensional actor devoid of any compelling inner life and his basketball ability is not what I would describe as aesthetically pleasing.

To be fair to Walls and Harlow, the script they have to work with is a scattershot piece of garbage. Walls’ character Kamal has a dark past and an odd relationship with his father, but none of these things are adequately fleshed out and are thus rendered annoying and unsatisfying to the viewer.

Harlow’s character Jeremy struggles with serious drug addiction but that battle never takes shape or is given any narrative energy and ends up just being ignored instead of dramatically exploited.

The two men’s personal lives, which feature the love interests Imani (Kamal’s wife - played by Teyana Taylor) and Tatiana (Jeremy’s girlfriend played by Laura Harrier), also fall decidedly flat.

Kamal and Imani’s marriage has all the familiarity of two people passing each other in a bus station. Jeremy and Tatiana’s relationship could be dramatically promising due to it being inter-racial and Jeremy’s drug addiction, but none of those topics are ever explored.

The director of this dud is Calmatic, a commercial director whose only other major film credit is the 2023 remake of the 1990 movie House Party. If you were unaware that the new House Party was released this past January then that makes two of us. Calmatic has no idea how to tell a story or how to elicit coherent and compelling performances from his cast and thus has no business directing films.

The bottom line is that the new White Men Can’t Jump is an instantly forgettable, meaningless, lifeless, purposeless exercise in nothingness. I’d say the film is a brick or an airball but the reality is that this movie soiled itself in the locker room and never even made it out to the court to take a shot.

If you really want to laugh while watching some basketball drama featuring bad acting, skip White Men Can’t Jump and tune in to the NBA playoffs starring the King of the Receding Hairline LeBron James as he shamelessly flops all over the court.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023