An action comedy heist movie set in Boston, produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, written by Casey Affleck, directed by Doug Liman, and starring Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, Jack Harlow, Ron Perlman, Ving Rhames, Paul Walter Hauser, and Alfred Molina. On paper, "The Instigators" is a summertime smash. Unfortunately, movies only start on paper.

The film follows Rory (Damon), a former Marine mechanic who is recruited alongside Cobby (Affleck), a wisecracking alcoholic screw-up, to rob a campaign event for corrupt Mayor Miccelli (Perlman). Things do not go as planned, and Rory and Cobby find themselves on the run from the bogeyman of the law Frank Toomey (Rhames) and the criminal underworld alike.

At an hour forty, "The Instigators" fits well on Apple TV+ as a solid summer streamer. The acting throughout is fine. Damon and Affleck's forced on-the-run buddy dynamic is entertaining at times but leans heavily on Affleck's wisecracks. For a Liman movie, the set pieces seem rather small, with a few brief car chases and some explosions, but nothing close to the action the director is known for shooting. The "villains" of the movie in the Mayor and Toomey are not particularly menacing and at no point do you worry for protagonists Rory and Cobby.

The fatal flaw of the movie, I think, is that the story and its characters lack depth and it finishes flat. As a streamer, "The Instigators" is just fine. For fans of Damon and the Boston genre movie, it will likely scratch an itch. But ultimately The Instigators as a whole is not a sum of its parts; it is forgettable and far from must-see, lacking the quality you would expect from the writer, director and actor combination. And, it lacks the fun that you would expect from an August release.