The Rip Review

Most people don't have the time, money, or energy to watch many movies, so when you do get a chance to watch something, you want it to be worthwhile. That's why Rotten Tomatoes exists: to give a snapshot of whether a movie is worth your time. But does it always work? I'll be watching all of Rotten Tomatoes’ Certified Fresh movies from this Wikipedia list, and we'll see if these movies are really worth the hype.

Movie 2 of 2026:

The Rip, directed by Joe Carnahan, is the newest Netflix star-studded action movie. I'll be honest, this isn't really my genre, so I didn't have very high expectations. My hopes did rise a bit, however, when the movie started, and I saw actors like Teyana Taylor and Steven Yeun, but that hope didn't last long. At least we know everyone got paid, as bonuses were based on the film's streaming performance, a first for Netflix.

Our main protagonists of this story are Dane (Matt Damon) and J.D. (Ben Affleck). Neither character is super fleshed out. We learn that Dane’s son died, but we don't get any indication of who his son was as a person or what their relationship was like, so it feels like that was added solely to give this character a sad backstory. A sad backstory that isn't fleshed out does not equal depth, though. J.D.'s tragic backstory is that his boss, with whom he was hooking up, was murdered in the opening sequence of the movie. Again, there's not much emotional resonance here because we don't know what their romantic relationship was like, so it's hard to feel that loss as the audience.

I honestly would have preferred if Dane and J.D. were on opposing sides of what to do with the rip money. The one thing Dane’s backstory did was let me know that this man has nothing to lose. That's interesting, but, of course, Matt and Ben have to be the buddy cop good guys here. I guess the final twist of who was actually trying to steal the rip money was okay, but I would have loved to see the actors get more villain time because in a movie like this, I want an unhinged villain.

Despite not being that gripped by this story or this style of film, my biggest gripe was by far the lighting. Some of these sequences were lit so poorly that I couldn't tell who was speaking or what was going on. This was especially egregious in action sequences where it's kind of important to know who you're rooting for. There were multiple dialogue-heavy moments as well, where I could tell the actor speaking was trying to convey an emotion, but I couldn't see it because their face was so darkly lit.

One positive thing about this movie was the stunt Direction, even though the lighting didn't do it any favors. The action sequences were competently performed and choreographed. I also thought the dog was really cute. Other than that, I didn't really care what was going on very much. I will admit this is in my genre.

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 79%

Is it worth the hype?:

No. I feel like even if you enjoy this style of movie, the lighting and character development are so lacking that it doesn't make the experience very worthwhile. There are definitely better action movies on Netflix. I'd only give this a shot if you are a Matt and Ben superfan.