Also, has anyone been saying what a great actor Casey Affleck is? His performances are powerful, emotional, real, purposely un-showey. His low-key retorts in this film are sharp, edgy, and hard-hitting despite their carefully understated delivery.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 9, 2025

This is like if The Departed was an airplane movie, and that’s fine with me. We don’t get a lot of these.

| Nov 27, 2024

It's fun to see Damon play an idiot (even if the "taking notes at a criminal conspiracy" line was ripped off from The Wire), but Chau is the only factor making this even a mild recommend.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Nov 20, 2024

It is hard to watch Matt Damon play so dumb next to Casey Affleck’s sleepy comic mannerisms in an overly plotted but thinly scripted heist film crossed with political corruption that is part of the definition of this era’s direct-to-streaming content.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 28, 2024

The film, produced by Ben Affleck and Damon himself, ends up being a boring parody of not-so-bad guys who even get one of their psychiatrist into trouble. If you have other plans, don't hesitate. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 11, 2024

The film, which reunites Matt Damon with his ‘The Bourne Identity’ director, while looking solid on paper, and boasting a stellar cast, including Casey Affleck, Ving Rhames and Ron Perlman, does not deliver

| Oct 4, 2024

“The Instigators” is fun enough with a few strong scenes and funny lines, but it’s not especially memorable. It feels like that glut of mid-‘90s Tarantinoesque where they all became part of the same tableau

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 13, 2024

“The Instigators,” about a bunch of incompetent robbers, features a stellar cast and director but fails to deliver a comedy pay-off.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 30, 2024

This is a really listless thriller... It just trudges along to a very forgettable conclusion.

| Aug 28, 2024

It's funny, but not funny enough. The heist complications are clever, but not all that clever.

| Aug 28, 2024

The droll humor of this Boston-set heist film doesn't provide laugh-out-loud moments, but it does keep the dialogue-heavy twists of fate entertaining.

| Aug 26, 2024

...familiar, fun subject matter that’s employed to persistently watchable (if entirely forgettable) effect...

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 24, 2024

An amiable action effort that refuses to take itself too seriously.

| Original Score: B- | Aug 23, 2024

As a heist comedy, its narrative often stumbles into clichés that lack the hook to offer anything substantial outside the traps of irony. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 5/10 | Aug 23, 2024

It has an all-star cast and a fantastic director and one would think that this would be a top-notch caper film but, sadly, it is not. It's a generic and mediocre caper film.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Aug 21, 2024

The Instigators squanders its treasure trove of talent on a story that never decides what it wants to be.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 21, 2024

The fast-paced setup initially seems full of promise, but leads to a conclusion that feels more like a fizzle than a bang.

| Aug 21, 2024

A perfectly serviceable — but frustratingly underwritten and dismissively executed — caper flick

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 20, 2024

It is hardly unwatchable, as some are claiming, but I can’t imagine ever wanting to revisit it or these characters again.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 17, 2024

This unfocused, flawed, feeble wannabe action-comedy caper about a Boston heist gone wrong turns out to be a total waste of talent and time.

| Original Score: 4/10 | Aug 17, 2024