'The Instigators' review: Heist film pastes bits of plot into a disappointing mess

Slogging your way through the crushing disappointment that is the Apple TV+ feature film “The Instigators” is like hitting the “Last Watched” button on your remote over and over and watching a bunch of different movies at once.

• Hey, it’s old pals Matt Damon and Casey Affleck, leaning into their Boston area roots by playing a couple of down-on-the-luck, knockabout guys trying to pull off an ambitious heist!
• Now we’ve got Ron Perlman as the bloviating and blatantly corrupt mayor of Boston, who on election night accepts cash bribes from everyone and anyone seeking to curry his favor. And isn’t that Toby Jones as the mayor’s equally dirty attorney?
• What’s this? Michael Stuhlbarg is playing a vituperative small-time local crime boss, with Alfred Molina as his right-hand man, Ving Rhames as his enforcer and Paul Walter Hauser as a wannabe goon reminiscent of the guy he played in “I, Tonya.” Intriguing!

• There’s Hong Chau as a psychiatrist treating Damon’s character, and they have kind of a Tony/Dr. Melfi thing going on.
• Hold on, now we’re getting a bombastic action movie with multiple explosions and big chase scenes!

If the talented and stylish director Doug Liman (“The Bourne Identity,” “Edge of Tomorrow”) and his editing team had figured out a way to connect all the pieces of the jumbled jigsaw puzzle of a screenplay by Affleck and Chuck Maclean, “The Instigators” might have worked as a heist film or a buddy comedy or a psychological thriller or a Coen Brothers-type of crime drama. Something.

Instead, it’s less than the sum of its parts. That incredible cast is utterly wasted, with major talents such as Perlman, Jones, Molina, Rhames and Hauser stuck in small supporting roles, playing underwritten, clichéd characters who drift in and out of the movie for a scene or two and then are forgotten.

Matt Damon has been one of our most reliable and versatile actors for three decades, but he seems detached here and gives an uncharacteristically bland performance as Rory, a divorced, out-of-work Marine who is estranged from his son and ready to give up on life, as he confides to his therapist, Dr. Rivera (Hong Chau), who as this story progresses will turn out to be one of worst therapists in the history of movie therapists.

Before Rory cashes in his ticket, as he puts it, he needs to make the $32,480 he owes in legal fees and bills and child support, so he can see his son one last time without feeling embarrassed. Rory will do anything on either side of the law to make that money, but wouldn’t becoming a criminal make him embarrassed to see his son? Oh well, never mind.

Stuhlbarg’s Mr. Besegai, who’s kind of like a dopier version of Lawrence Tierney’s Joe Cabot in “Reservoir Dogs,” is the “mastermind” of the obligatory once-in-a-lifetime score that will involve robbing the coffers of Perlman’s Mayor Miccelli on election night in Boston. The team includes Rory, the talkative smartass and small-time criminal Cobby (Casey Affleck) and the hot-headed dimwit Scalvo (Jack Harlow), and let’s just say the heist goes sideways in bloody fashion. Rory and Cobby barely escape with their lives and are forced to go on the run, engaging in the expected bickering and bantering as they try to figure out what to do, what with everyone in Boston looking for them and quite a few parties wanting them dead dead and more dead.

The MacGuffin in “The Instigators” is a bracelet that has some very important numbers scribbled on the inside. Now, this being 2024, there are, oh, about a THOUSAND better ways to hide vital information, but there you have it. (I also love that Mayor Miccelli keeps an enormous safe in his office — a safe containing piles of ill-gotten cash. Good hiding place!)

Damon and Affleck can’t help but deliver some entertaining exchanges, but they’re both playing uninteresting characters without much depth baked into their back stories. The screenplay crowbars in an excuse for Hong Chau’s Dr. Rivera to join Rory and Cobby on the run, a highly implausible scenario even for a breezy heist movie. (Even more ridiculous, there’s a hint of romance between Cobby and Dr. Rivera.)

Per the TV/Movie Law that states every thriller regardless of genre (heist, superhero, dystopian, buddy cop) must include needle drops of hits from the past, “The Instigators” delivers an eclectic mix that includes Petula Clark’s “Downtown,” House of Pain’s “Jump Around” and, incongruously, the Temptations’ “Ball of Confusion,” which is criminally misused. When Doug Liman is at this best, he delivers electric work. When he stumbles, we get two of the junkiest movies of 2024: first, the “Road House” remake and now “The Instigators.”