The Damon/Affleck connection is strong, and it gets a bit stronger later this year with The Instigators. Matt Damon and Casey Affleck star in the latter’s Boston-based heist flick, which he co-wrote with Chuck Maclean and is directed by Doug Liman. The film will be Liman’s second this year following last month’s Road House remake. It’s also his first time working with Damon since The Bourne Identity.
EW has our first look at The Instigators, which Affleck has said was inspired by Midnight Run and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Pretty good influences, if you ask me.
Affleck says the film is “about two strangers who are hired for a heist. They become frenemies and then become friends while Jack Harlow yells at us, Paul Walter Hauser insults us, Ving Rhames hunts us, and Hong Chau keeps us alive.”
Sounds like a riot!
Damon costars as Rory, a desperate father who reluctantly joins forces with Cobby (Affleck), an ex-con, “to pull off a robbery of the ill-gained earnings of a corrupt politician,” per the official synopsis. When the heist inevitably goes sideways, the unlikely pair “find themselves engulfed in a whirlwind of chaos, pursued not only by the police but also backward bureaucrats and vengeful crime bosses.”
Chau plays Rory’s therapist, who gets dragged along for the ride. Also in the cast are Alfred Molina, Ron Perlman, and Michael Stuhlbarg, along with the aforementioned Harlow, Hauser, and Rhames.
The Instigators hits select theaters on August 2nd before moving to Apple T+ on August 9th.
