I seriously love Apple TV+. I feel I need to make that clear right from the get-go. Compared to, say, Netflix, I’m of the belief that I get much more value from Apple’s streamer, in terms of the size of the library relative to the content that I enjoy, compared to Netflix where I feel like I’m paying for something I barely use — except for the few needles I manage to find in the impossibly large content haystack. Having said that, though, it gives me no joy to see Apple TV+ back in a familiar place, where it’s once again drawing ridicule on account of another splashy new movie release that has a star-studded cast, the elements of which once again just don’t come together.
That’s the consensus, at any rate, ahead of Apple’s release this weekend of its latest feature film, The Instigators, starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck.
As with one movie after another for quite a while now from the streamer, The Instigators on paper looks like it has everything to be a winner. A great director (The Bourne Identity’s Doug Limon), plus a bankable cast in the form of Damon and Affleck — as well as a fun plot that calls for the robbery of a corrupt politician. And, yet, somehow it’s another example of an Apple TV+ movie coming up short. In other words, a repeat of other recent Apple feature films like Napoleon and Killers of the Flower Moon.
Based on 77 reviews so far, The Instigators already has an abysmal 43% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes ahead of its Aug. 9 Apple TV+ release date. Those early takes have panned the movie as everything from “flat” to “disjointed” and largely “uninspired,” while a Washington Post reviewer was particularly cutting: “It’s 101 minutes of talented people struggling to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear and coming up with a Filene’s Basement handbag.”
Regular viewers who caught early cinema screenings haven’t been much kinder. The Instigators has a nearly-as-low 50% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes as of this writing, with one reviewer who awarded The Instigators 0.5/5 stars opining on the review aggregation site that the “plot was ridiculous and implausible, script was terrible and the language was foul — constant f-bombs.”
As for what the movie is about, Apple summarizes it thus: “Rory (Matt Damon) and Cobby (Casey Affleck) are reluctant partners: A desperate father and an ex-con thrown together to pull off a robbery of the ill-gained earnings of a corrupt politician.
“But when the heist goes wrong, the two find themselves engulfed in a whirlwind of chaos, pursued not only by police, but also backwards bureaucrats and vengeful crime bosses. Completely out of their depth, they convince Rory’s therapist (Hong Chau) to join their riotous getaway through the city, where they must put aside their differences and work together to evade capture — or worse.”
Lest this seem overly critical of Apple’s platform — which, again, I remain a subscriber and fan of — it’s at this point that I should stress one very important fact: Apple TV+’s problems with movies are not specific to its own service. Netflix, for example, swapped out its film chief a few months ago as part of a broader rethink of its own movie strategy, which has included one dud of a release after another. Is there something about trying to repackage the movie experience into a small-screen format that gets lost in translation? Maybe.
But another thing that would be unfair to Apple TV+ would be to imply that it has no quality movies at all. On the contrary, while The Instigators looks like another L for Apple TV+, don’t listen to anyone who tells you that its movies are all bad (although some, like Argylle, are very, very bad indeed). In my opinion, the streamer’s excellent movie fare includes:
- The quiet Jennifer Lawrence indie Causeway
- The Sundance darling Cha Cha Real Smooth
- Obviously, Apple’s Oscar-winner Coda
- Tom Hanks’ Finch and Greyhound
- The new documentary Girls State
- And the John le Carre documentary The Pigeon Tunnel
Meanwhile, check out a trailer for The Instigators below.
