‘The Instigators’ Review: A Star-Studded Boston Heist Movie

The best joke in “The Instigators” is a crack about the public school curriculum in Quincy, the suburb just south of Boston that outsiders never pronounce correctly. (It’s closer to a “z” than an “s.”) It feels like an inside joke, as do later affectionate jabs at other Greater Boston locales, lingo and corrupt politicians. This is sort of a heist movie, but it is first and foremost a Boston movie, full of Boston guys and Boston accents and (South) Boston places and Boston humor. Heck, “The Instigators” is practically Boston: The Immersive Experience.

It will surprise no one to learn that it’s produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, and co-stars Damon alongside the movie’s co-writer, Casey Affleck. Its other writer is Chuck MacLean, the creator and executive producer of “City on a Hill,” the three-season Showtime drama about, you guessed it, Boston.

The director of “The Instigators,” Doug Liman, is a born and raised New Yorker. But both he and Damon found collaborative success in 2002 with “The Bourne Identity.” This is their first project together since that hit, and it’s studded with stars: Alongside Affleck and Damon, there’s Hong Chau, Michael Stuhlbarg, Alfred Molina, Ving Rhames, Paul Walter Hauser, Toby Jones, Ron Perlman and the rapper Jack Harlow (in his second feature film role).

Somehow, in 2024, all that wattage still only merits a one-week limited theatrical release in the August dead zone and a quick hop to streaming. Given a few weeks in theaters to pick up steam, I can imagine it doing well, mostly because it’s so easygoing. “The Instigators” starts out like an “Ocean’s 11” riff, with a group of petty thieves gathered by a stormy crime boss, Mr. Besegai (Stuhlbarg), to pull off a big job and then never speak of it again. It seems the sitting governor (Perlman, ideally cast) is a crook, which all but guarantees his re-election — and the cash bribes that will be brought to his victory ball make it an ideal job.

Some of the group, like Rory (Damon), really need the money; he’s depressed and desperate and late on his child support, and his therapist (Chau) is worried about him. Others, like Cobby (Casey Affleck) and Scalvo (Harlow), are just the kind of guys who do this kind of thing. But Mr. Besegai is not Mr. Ocean, having snagged none of his breezy luck. Everything goes wrong right from the start, and Cobby and Rory find themselves thrown together in a comedy of blunders.

For all its promise, there’s a lumpiness to “The Instigators.” On the one hand, its characters are memorably eccentric motormouths whose zingers come so fast that you can’t quite catch them all. In a 2019 interview, MacLean described the Bostonian sense of humor as being “completely cynical” combined with a “weird appreciation for the absurd,” a spot-on characterization that pervades the film. Chau provides a welcome counterbalance to all the knuckleheads and blowhards, and when the movie becomes a three-hander with her, Damon and Affleck, it finds its stride.

But that rhythm hits a little too late, and in the meantime it’s a little hard to track with the plot. It zigs and zags pleasantly, but certain elements introduced early on — chiefly Damon’s character’s demons — get buried in the action. It’s clear the movie is trying to subvert “Ocean’s 11.” But the entire point of subversion is to undermine authority, the way “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” subverted the musician biopic, or the films of Robert Altman subvert every genre. Once you experience a subversive film, you can’t watch the original genre the same way.

“The Instigators” poses no danger to the swanky, capable heist genre, perhaps because its fantasy is so blatant to begin with. This movie is far more interested in celebrating its beloved city of terrific, steely weirdos. Boston may be the most distinctive American city to obsess filmmakers — it’s smaller and, though diversifying, still more homogenous than Los Angeles or New York. Though Boston and its environs have a rich array of micro-accents, even an outsider can clock the region with ease.

But it’s probably that peculiar sense of humor, its scoffing ebullience, that really makes Boston work so well onscreen. (And, OK, I like hearing guys who look and sound like my uncles.) So if the plot of “The Instigators” kind of goes nowhere, its characters give it the feel of a hangout movie with some added shootouts and car chases and a few well-timed explosions. And that, at least, is wicked good.

The Instigators
Rated R for explosions, violence and salty language and situations. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. Watch on Apple TV+.