Criticism of the movie “Confiscation”; Heavy budgets and light films

If it was the beginning of the 2000s, this movie with the faces of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon on the poster would have made a lot of noise in the cinemas; But the year is 2026 and the cinema is Netflix. “The Rip”, the Netflix crime-thriller movie, with a strange budget of one hundred million dollars, has recently come to this online distribution platform, but it will fill the empty streaming arena in these early days of the year. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, the friends of Garambah and Golestan, have also rolled up their sleeves to direct this movie and, apart from acting, they have also been responsible for producing it. While the duo of Affleck and Damon is always a sight to behold, a lackluster director is enough to throw off the equation. In the review of the movie “Confiscation”, I focus on Damon’s and Affleck’s less than expected performances and the weak direction of Joe Carnahan, whose script does not touch the heart.

Warning! There is a risk of revealing the story in the review of the movie “Confiscation”.

Criticism of the movie “Confiscation”; A $20 million trap

You should not expect much from “confiscation”. This is a weekend action movie that spells out its story for you in Netflix style. Inspired by the stories he heard from a real Miami cop, Joe Carnahan wrote a screenplay in which, from the first seconds, he wants to lay the groundwork for a multi-layered mystery of murder and corruption. This murder creates a tension between the main group of characters that makes none of them trust the other. Every time we’re given new information, we know there’s another plot twist, another surprise, and the suspects keep changing. Who are the good guys? Who are the bad guys? Shouldn’t the person who has a tattoo on his hand “We are among the good people and will be” change his behavior? Carnahan tries to keep you guessing at the end of the film. But he is neither a good screenwriter nor a good action director, and everything he wanted to achieve with “Confiscation” was met with a closed door.

The film opens with a policeman sending a message about a huge amount of money to someone just before he is murdered by unknown people. This police officer, the captain of the special anti-narcotics unit of Miami, Jackie Wells (Lena Esco) emerges from the water. Lt. Dean Dumars (Matt Damon) receives a tip about confiscating a stash of cash that could lead to the arrest of Jackie’s killers.

He gathers the team and with JD (Ben Affleck), Mike Rowe (Steven Yeun), Noma (Tiana Taylor) and Lulu Salazar (Catalina Sandino Moreno) go after this clue. After investigating the house of a lonely girl named Daisy (Sasha Kaye), who claims that the house belonged to her late grandmother, they find twenty million dollars, and the hard part of the story begins. They know that at any moment corrupt cops or an army of cartel soldiers might arrive; More importantly, they know that there is probably a traitor among them who was involved in Jackie’s murder.

By the end of the film, Carnahan casts suspicions on all the characters, but his revelations are grossly exaggerated and watery. In the style of Poirot, religion brings the characters together and reveals the truth of the story. For these flashback scenes, the warmth and grain of the image have been raised to evoke a sense of nostalgia for crime-police movies of the nineties and early 2000s. But they do not go beyond this nostalgia; Nostalgia for days and movies that will never happen again.

One of them is a movie like “Training Day” which talks about corrupt policemen similar to “Confiscation”. But if “Education Day” brought Denzel Washington the Oscar for the best actor and Ethan Hawke a supporting actor nomination, “Confiscation” is not going to win any awards; Especially in the field of acting where even Affleck and Damon have appeared much weaker than expected; So that the acting of Scott Adkins in this movie is on their hands. These two seem to have heard some terms and techniques from real policemen, and have tried to make themselves look like experienced policemen. But their wandering in the chaos of the script, they easily lose their hand.

At the same time that Ben Affleck and Matt Damon occupy the entire time of the film with performances that are basically not much different from their real selves, the other actors, especially the actresses, Tiana Taylor, Sasha Kaye and Catalina Sandino Moreno, are all relegated to the sidelines; For example, Lulu gets shot, but as if not as if, she returns to the table counting money and in the end she doesn’t hear from her children, whom she was so worried about. It seems that in choosing the actors, except for racial diversity, they only paid attention to the charisma of the people in the background; Otherwise, it would be a waste to bring in Taylor, who is nominated for an Oscar today for Paul Thomas Anderson’s film, just to count money in the background.

There are a lot of these regrets and desires in “Confiscation”. Not only does this film waste a lot of time on pointless plot points, not just the abilities of its actors; such as counting money several times, shaking each other’s hands and fighting and arguing; Like when Dean and JD get gloves together, and in the meantime, JD doesn’t know how to get that big cell phone out of Mike’s bulletproof vest. Instead of this waste of time, Carnahan could have reached characterization and found an identity and motivation for his characters. Among all these characters, the only one who we know more than his name is Dean, who, with the death of his son, has created a simple story for his character; Otherwise, even Affleck’s character will remain unknown to us until the end.

Apart from the problems of the script, the poor direction of the film is especially noticeable in the action scenes; Although the film does not have many action scenes, the shootings and chases are incredibly soulless; as if they were forced into the film. Wrong stagings and chaotic editing made “Confiscation” a movie that only bears the names of “action” and “thriller”; Otherwise, none will be found in it.

After twenty minutes of setup at the beginning of the film (which is practically the best part of “Confiscation”), the gang finally finds the money, and from here, where the story should have peaked, the film begins to go downhill, and it goes even lower with the shooting and chases at the end of the film. Without creative cinematography or action design, the film will quickly become boring and lose the same excitement it did not have.

There is an assumption in Hollywood that the more money you pour into a project, the better the final product will turn out. Although this premise has proven itself time and again to be futile, the producers cannot give up on it. One of its latest examples is “The Electric State” for Netflix itself, which with an imaginary budget of 320 million dollars and the Russo brothers as directors, has become one of the worst films in the history of Netflix (and maybe the entire cinema).

“Confiscation” is another example of such additional spending; Because no amount of money can magically turn a bad script into a good movie. Maybe big names like Affleck and Damon are enough to draw the audience to the film, but Joe Carnahan has repeatedly shown that he is not a director who can handle big films. From Smokin’ Aces, another star-studded movie that happened to also feature Ben Affleck, to his recent lackluster action-thrillers like Shadow Force and Not Without Hope. Although Carnahan has the experience of working on other crime films such as “Narc” (Narc), but since “The Grey” he has turned to making serialized and highly forgettable titles; A category to which, unfortunately, “confiscation” also belongs.

Film ID “confiscation” (The Rip)

Director: Joe Carnahan
Author: Joe Carnahan
Actors: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Tiana Taylor, Steven Yeun, Kyle Chandler
Product: 2026, United States
Site score IMDb to the movie: 6.8 out of 10
Rating of the movie on Rotten Tomatoes website: 79%
Summary of the story: After the death of a Miami police officer, the anti-narcotics team is investigated by the FBI. But the procrastination of the police and the FBI to find the killer pushes the team, and especially their new commander, Dean, to find the truth themselves. Meanwhile, Dean receives information about the confiscation of money hidden in an abandoned warehouse. But what should be an ordinary confiscation turns into the most dangerous confiscation of their lives. As the amount of discovered money is spread, the trust of the team members is lost and the news is also leaked. As members grow suspicious of each other and threats from outside forces intensify, it is unclear who will survive to see the dawn of tomorrow…

The review of the movie “Confiscation” is the author’s personal point of view and is not necessarily the position of Digikala Mag.

Source: Digikala Mag