The first time filmmaker Doug Liman and American actor Matt Damon worked together, on Bourne Identity (The memory in the skin), in 2002, they offered the first installment of what would become one of the most lucrative franchises in the history of cinema, making the comedian an essential figure of the blockbuster American.
So when, a few years ago, Matt Damon sent him the script for a new project (The Instigators) which would star him alongside Casey Affleck, Doug Liman, in his own words, “instantly dropped everything he was working on [il travaillait] “. “I was blown away by the originality of the story and the relationship between the two main characters. With these two renowned actors on board, all that was missing was an exceptional actress to stand up to them. Matt thought of Hong Chau, with whom he had shared the screen in Downsizing (2017), and it is indeed exceptional. I knew right away that I had a film,” he says in an interview with Duty.
Damon plays Rory, a former Marine and family man who has a string of problems and is trying to make amends with his son. Through a series of circumstances, he thinks he’ll find the solution to his problems with Cobby (Casey Affleck), an ex-con who leads him into a robbery targeting the mayor of Boston, a crooked and corrupt man.
When their heist goes awry, the two criminals find themselves hunted by law enforcement, members of the criminal mafia, and the politician from whom they stole an important bracelet. On the run across Connecticut, the mismatched duo will be helped by Rory’s psychiatrist (Hong Chau), who is determined to keep him alive.
The reign of incompetence
Doug Liman immediately saw the comic potential of this unlikely trio. “You have a criminal who has completely failed in life and is pursuing his career without much conviction, with an extremely precise and methodical military man, trained to follow the rules, who engages in an illegal enterprise with this attitude of absolute obedience. In the middle of that, a therapist, who is constantly analyzing them with her stoic air. Just watching them try to get by without killing each other is very funny.”
To find the right dose of humor in a film riddled with action scenes that are as dynamic as they are memorable, the director took inspiration from a rather left-field feature film: The Bad News Bears (The cool team1976). This children’s film tells the story of Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau), an alcoholic pool cleaner recruited to become the coach of a new junior baseball team that will have a hard time making a name for itself in the league.
“I watched this movie many times as a kid, and it was the feeling, the memory of it that inspired me, and that probably doesn’t correspond at all to what the film’s team accomplished. Having worked around Jason Bourne, a hero who is completely competent, I needed to immerse myself in a work that celebrated incompetence, in a way, and to try to create complex characters and funny situations from that.”
In the heart of Boston
Filmed mostly on the streets of Boston, The Instigators transposes his story into the reality of a city with a unique and recognizable atmosphere. The filmmaker insisted that the most ambitious and stunning scenes be filmed in real settings, with little or no special effects.
For example, the film’s final sequence, which alternates between the mayor’s office and the streets of Boston, was filmed over several days and nights using dozens of fire trucks and police vehicles, and hundreds of extras and stuntmen as protesters, police officers, and firefighters. The production then moved inside City Hall for scenes in the building’s lobby, as well as the second-floor stairwells and hallways.
The film’s crew also staged a car chase sequence that begins in the streets and alleys of the Back Bay neighborhood, as Rory, Cobby and the psychiatrist go on the run in the latter’s black BMW with the police in hot pursuit. The trio and their pursuers then travel over the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge to Memorial Drive, which runs along the Charles River, before entering the massive I-93 tunnel.
“To succeed in a car chase scene, when you actually recreate it, you absolutely need the cooperation of the authorities in the place where you are filming. For that of Bourne Identitythe City of Paris let us close the streets and do whatever we had in mind. It’s much harder to get that kind of permission in big American cities. But when you make a movie in Boston and it’s produced by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, the reaction from the mayor and the governor is much more enthusiastic. They didn’t give us carte blanche, but they helped us find solutions, including closing the tunnel and doing this impressive sequence,” says Doug Liman.
To make the chase more intense and realistic, the director took inspiration from a much more dramatic car scene — the one directed by Alfonso Cuarón and filmed by Emmanuel Lubezki in the film Children of Men (2006); a long sequence shot for which a special camera was mounted on a robotic arm inside the car, capturing the actors’ reactions from every possible angle.
“I also wanted to put the audience in the car with the characters. I wanted what was happening inside the car to be as, if not more, interesting than the action happening outside the windows. I had a solid script to make the interactions between the three heroes funny and captivating. The bar was high after the extremely exciting chase we had designed for Bourne Identity and I wanted to try something different.”
Doug Liman once again delivers a film full of action and humor, which perfectly matches the definition of a summer blockbuster. “I wasn’t raised on arthouse films and New Wave cinema,” he concludes. “What I like is to laugh, to be entertained, to have a good time. And that’s what I hope to offer the public.”
The film The Instigators hits theaters August 2 and will be available on AppleTV+ August 9.