With a 43% on Rotten Tomatoes, director Doug Liman’s crime comedy “The Instigators” (now streaming on Apple TV Plus) has not exactly been a hit with critics. That’s a bit surprising since it seems like a formula that would be hard to mess up. Yet somehow, pretty much every surefire element fails in this story about a pair of bumbling Boston robbers on the run after a heist gone wrong.
Matt Damon and Casey Affleck have terrible chemistry as the bickering criminal morons, there’s no suspense or excitement to the plot and nobody is worth rooting for. Among the overstuffed and overqualified supporting cast, only Hong Chau comes out relatively unscathed, and the entire purpose of her psychiatrist character is to point out everyone’s bad choices.
