Netflix is dominating 2026 with straight-to-streaming movies that understand the game has changed.
The Rip, which dropped January 16th, represents the latest evolution in how action cinema competes for your attention in an era where looking up from your phone for two hours feels like a commitment.
In a moment where you could be doomscrolling, shopping, or placing bets on live sports, findings from Casinos.com, specialists in online casinos that accept Apple Pay, show that most players now engage from their phones, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s latest project had to hit the ground running.
The Rip lands as a rare breed these days. A muscular, mid-budget, R-rated action thriller that feels ripped straight from the early 2000s in the best possible way.
Joe Carnahan gets his biggest canvas in years and uses it to deliver a swaggering cops-and-cash caper built around $24 million hidden in a Miami stash house and a squad of narcotics officers whose trust begins to fray the moment they discover it.
But with both actors in their mid-50s and the theatrical landscape shrinking around them, the real question lingers, is this a swansong for their time in big action setpieces, or is this how they reinvent themselves for the streaming era?
Carnahan in His Natural Habitat
Carnahan has been delivering gritty, testosterone-fueled thrillers since Narc put him on the map in 2002. Smokin’ Aces gave him mainstream heat in 2007. The Grey proved in 2011 that he could mix wolf-pack survival with balls-out tension.
The Rip fits his wheelhouse perfectly, a spiritual successor to those classic 70s cop thrillers he openly reveres (Serpico, Prince of the City, Heat) filtered through his particular brand of paranoid, claustrophobic tension.
The setup is elegantly simple. Miami-Dade’s Tactical Narcotics Team uncovers the cartel cash after their captain Jackie (Lina Esco) gets murdered by masked thugs.
Lieutenant Dane Dumars (Damon) and Detective Sergeant JD Byrne (Affleck) find themselves leading a squad that includes Detective Mike Ro (Steven Yeun), Detective Desi Perez (Teyana Taylor), and others, all forced to count the money on-site per Miami law while knowing dangerous people will come looking for it. Outside forces circle. Internal suspicions fester. Betrayal and paranoia consume the squad as the clock ticks down.
One standout street encounter uses just five camera setups, relying on performance and audience expectation of Damon as a movie star to generate tension. The film trades on cultural perception, poking at the voodoo doll of what we expect from these actors and using that against us.
Critics have praised the first hour’s unbearable tension and twisty interrogation structure, though some note the action sequences feel uneven and the finale stretches longer than necessary.
Damon and Affleck: Different Paths, Same Destination
Damon is a legitimate action star with a massive qualifier: he picks his spots. The Bourne trilogy remains his defining contribution, a series that reinvented spy thrillers for the post-9/11 era with shaky-cam brutality and amnesiac paranoia.
Jason Bourne gave audiences a thinking man’s action hero who solved problems with intelligence before violence, and when violence came it felt desperate rather than choreographed. But Damon’s done action sparingly. The Martian, Ford v Ferrari, even misfires like Elysium and The Great Wall show he’s selective, strategic, always grounding the fantastical in human stakes.
Affleck has the broader action resume and feels more like a classic tough-guy lead even without a single defining role. The Accountant leaned into his physicality and methodical intensity. What makes Affleck work in action is his willingness to play flawed, morally compromised characters who don’t need to be heroes.
Together they function as a proper two-hander action duo, genuinely playing off each other’s rhythms. The chemistry comes from 30+ years of friendship distilled into performances where suspicion and loyalty can coexist in a single look. They know each other’s tells better than any script could write.
So are Matt Damon and Ben Affleck actually action stars in the Netflix era? Here’s the truth: they’re not trying to be Statham or Reacher or Bourne or Batman. They’re smarter than that. Damon brings credibility, the proof he can anchor brutal, grounded action when the material’s there. Affleck brings volume, the willingness to throw down in everything from Gotham alleys to Boston heists without needing to be the cleanest guy in the room.
The Netflix Era
Netflix rewrote action rules, and The Rip nails it. Damon spilled Netflix’s playbook: Old-school action ramps three set pieces across acts. Now they demand a big one in the first five minutes to hook scrollers, plus plot recaps for phone multitaskers.
The fight’s no longer with theaters. You’re battling TikTok, bets, and DMs. The Rip counters with tight-space paranoia in vans and garages, fueled by twists instead of CGI blasts. Yeun, Taylor, Calle, Chandler, and Adkins bring TV-honed tension to the squad.
And the film is performing. It dominated Netflix’s first week of 2026, beating even Stranger Things to claim the number one US spot and sitting comfortably at number two globally.
The Rip won’t spawn a franchise like Bourne or Batman, but it proves they can still carry a mid-budget thriller to Netflix’s number one spot without IP crutches or CGI spectacle. That’s the new model.
Netflix has become the home for this kind of film because theatres abandoned it. And if Carnahan can deliver this level of tension on a Netflix budget, the future looks promising for directors who love the genre.
Damon and Affleck have found their lane. Mid-budget action anchored by stars who know what they’re doing and a director who respects the craft. The Rip delivers exactly what it promises: cops, cash, paranoia, and two legends reminding you why they’ve lasted this long.