Netflix's 'The Rip' Sets a New Bar for Stressful, Character-Driven Cop Films
Corruption and pressure collide in Joe Carnahan's latest thriller, where trust is the most dangerous currency of all
Joe Carnahan delivers a tight, volatile action film where loyalty is tested and every decision feels like a trap.
Netflix’s The Rip wastes absolutely no time making you uncomfortable—and then dares you to stay there. Written and directed by Joe Carnahan, the film opens with the plot thrown right in your face and the aftermath of loss that never lets its foot off your chest.
This is a cop thriller built not on countless car chases or running down bad guys over sprawling cityscapes, but on claustrophobia. Tight locations—stash houses, tankers, rooms with no exits—become emotional pressure chambers where trust erodes faster than a snow cone in July. Every glance means something. Every silence is suspicious. And every choice feels like it will cost everyone their life.
The inciting event is blunt and destabilizing: the captain of the Tactical Narcotics Team (TNT) is murdered. What follows is a “rip” based on a tip that seems legitimate—until it isn’t. The remaining members of the team follow suit anyway, making The Rip less about law enforcement and more about what happens when survival instincts come head-to-head with temptation.
At its core, this film focuses on:
corruption
desperation
seduction of money
the choice between “doing what’s right” vs “doing what benefits me”
Carnahan frames the story as a series of lies wrapped in truths—Trojan horses hidden inside cross-communication. No one is fully clean, and no one is fully wrong about their desires and temptations, making the unraveling that much more effective. It asks the audience plainly: what would you do, right now, if you were in this situation?
A brotherhood that transcends on and off the screen
Watching Matt Damon and Ben Affleck together is its own kind of thrill. As Dane and JD, their chemistry doesn’t feel performed—it feels inherited. Decades of real-life friendship bleed through every exchange, every argument, and every unspoken understanding. It’s a dance of brothers who know exactly where the other is weak and will falter. That familiarity makes the tension sharper. When trust starts to crack, it hurts more because it’s personal.
Humor infiltrates the stress as a means of survival
For all its grit, The Rip understands something crucial about people in this line of work: you laugh or you break.
The comedic beats—carefully woven into dialogue and downtime—don’t undercut the danger. They humanize it. There is humor in absurd moments and cracked jokes where tears should exist—showing the team hanging on to small moments of joy like a fragile lifeline. Some of the film’s most memorable moments come from these pauses, especially scenes involving Affleck and Scott Adkins—who plays FBI Agent Del Byrne—where humor becomes both shield and weapon.
The cast is stacked, as Steven Yeun (Mike Ro), Teyana Taylor (Numa Baptiste), Catalina Sandino Moreno (Lolo Salazar), and Sasha Calle (Desiree Lopez Molina) all bring presence and credibility to the early stretch of the film. Their scenes (in the first 80–90 minutes of the film) are at the core of what makes this film stress-inducing and chaotic.
That’s why it’s noticeable when the narrative narrows. Without spoiling specifics, there’s a moment that feels less like an organic story choice and more like a contractual checkbox with Netflix—the kind of scene that doesn’t derail the film but makes you wish the story had invested more deeply in its women by the end. What begins as an ensemble thriller slowly tilts into a “dude-film” finish, casting the team aspect aside for bravado and explosions.
It doesn’t ruin the ride—but it does make me long for what The Rip could have been.
Overall the movie is…
Is The Rip one of the greatest cop films of the last five years? That depends on your bar.
What’s unquestionable is everything it is:
a well-constructed, high-stress film
a film rooted in betrayal, greed, and moral compromise
strong performances and tonal control
It sets a solid early benchmark for films in 2026—thrilling, imperfect, and confident in what it wants to be, even when it leaves some of its potential on the table. You’ll finish it tense, entertained, and impressed by the plot twist (even if you’re still slightly suspicious).
And that feels exactly right.
Stream The Rip now on Netflix. Check out the trailer below.