'The Instigators' review: Matt Damon, Casey Affleck have chemistry, but movie lacks spark

WHAT IT'S ABOUT The latest movie from the Artists Equity production company founded by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, "The Instigators" stars Damon and Casey Affleck as a tandem on the run from the law plus other criminal elements after a failed heist.

It's set in where else but Boston and the surrounding area, following Rory (Damon) and Cobby (Affleck) as they attempt to rob the corrupt Mayor Miccelli (Ron Perlman) at the behest of crime boss Mr. Besegai (Michael Stuhlbarg), only to find the gig interrupted by a series of unforeseen events.

Director Doug Liman knows his way around an action-comedy, with a filmography that includes everything from "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" to the "Road House" remake from earlier this year.

The picture amasses quite the ensemble, with co-stars also including Hong Chau, Ving Rhames, Jack Harlow, Alfred Molina, Toby Jones, Paul Walter Hauser and the great theater actor André De Shields.

MY SAY There's more yelling in a Boston accent in "The Instigators" than at Fenway Park, more dropped "r" sounds than you'll overhear on a stroll through Boston Common or Harvard Square. It's not just the natives Damon and Affleck, either. Stuhlbarg, a native of Long Beach, California, goes for it with absolute gusto.

Several scenes take place in what Cobby calls "my bar," an everyday Irish watering hole; the Charles River cameos in the background of a car chase through the city; a Dunkin' cup makes an obligatory appearance.

It is, in other words, exactly the movie you think it is, as much of a tribute to the stars' enduring love for their hometown and its citizens than a production that aspires toward anything serious.

Sometimes, this can be fun. Damon and the younger Affleck have plenty of chemistry, honed over the decades. They once spent an entire movie (the 2003 oddity "Gerry") walking through a desert together, for heaven's sake. Here, their banter, scripted by Casey Affleck and Chuck MacLean, has an edge and a rhythm to it. 

Watching all of these other exceptionally talented actors dive into the mayhem lends it a measure of gravitas that wouldn't have otherwise been there. The wonderful Chau plays a character that makes absolutely no sense — Rory's therapist, who eventually becomes a willing hostage, and later, somehow, a hostage negotiator — but she makes her almost believable.

As we've already said, Liman knows how to handle this genre as well as any of his contemporaries. He's not exactly stretching here, but he keeps it light and brisk and fleet, like a stone skimming across the water.

It's just that no matter how much heft the Actors Equity team brings to the project on both sides of the camera, there's simply no evading the fact that the movie plays as so inconsequential, so free of meaning and purpose, that it offers nothing to grab onto. It's a little too in love with itself, in other words. You keep waiting for that one scene that puts it all in context and sets "The Instigators" apart, but it never arrives.

BOTTOM LINE It's only truly worth it if you're a Boston movie completist.