Here’s my synopsis for The Instigators, Apple TV+’s messy straight-to-streamer led by Matt Damon and Casey Affleck: After botching an election-night robbery, two dim-but-affable Boston bros (and one of their shrinks) outrun the police as they bicker like they’re in couples therapy. It’s a heist movie on a psychiatrist’s couch. It’s a parody of a heist movie set in Boston. It’s an action-comedy that wants to be a blockbuster that parodies heist movies.
Whatever this movie is going for, it’s wobbly, and the rivets are popping off as it tries to hold everything together.
Casey Affleck and Matt Damon in The Instigators. (Courtesy of Apple TV+)
Without being one of the positive adjectives (“genre-bending”) that sometimes get applied to films that have no real Hollywood precedent, The Instigators is hard to categorize. It’s not quite trash or art or “so bad it’s good.” It has the veneer of a high‑c …