Is The Rip Based On A True Story?
Is The Rip Based On A True Story? (Photo Credit – Netflix)

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s Oscar-winning duo reunited for the Netflix original movie, The Rip, released recently. In the Netflix thriller, a narcotics raid leads to an unsettling discovery, and the film lets that moment sit before revealing its weight. As the story progresses, we are slowly drawn into the corrupt world of law enforcement and see how money can corrupt even the best in the business.

But is the movie based on an actual incident? Director Joe Carnahan confirmed that the film is not entirely a work of fiction.

The Rip Draws From A Real $20 Million Drug Case

The Rip follows two Miami police officers assigned to a Tactical Narcotics Team. Matt Damon portrays Lieutenant Dane Dumars, and Ben Affleck plays Detective Sergeant JD Byrne. After receiving a credible lead, the unit searches a suspected safe house, expecting routine results.

Instead, the officers uncover approximately $20 million linked to drug activity, a discovery that immediately shifts the direction of the operation. Rather than following protocol, Dumars withholds the information from superiors and restricts communication. As those decisions unfold, Byrne begins to question whether the situation is still under control or moving toward something far more dangerous.

That fracture in trust becomes the film’s driving force. But the story itself did not originate in fiction. Joe Carnahan, who wrote and directed the film, credited the narrative to real events. Known for exploring moral compromise within law enforcement, Carnahan has previously tackled similar themes in the 2002 movie Narc. With The Rip, accuracy became central to the process. To achieve that, the production brought in Chris Casiano as a technical advisor, who was directly involved in a real case that inspired the film.

In an interview with /Film’s Ben Pearson, Carnahan explained how Casiano’s firsthand experience influenced key moments in the story: procedural specifics shaped scenes that might otherwise seem exaggerated. For example, the process of counting the seized cash was neither symbolic nor brief. It was extensive, taking a full forty-two hours, and that timeline appears in the film exactly as it occurred. While specific sequences may feel heightened on the screen, they unfolded that way in reality as well.

Carnahan described one such moment in detail, saying, “Chris Casiano was actually involved in that rip. So he was able to fill in and give us a lot more color in terms of those details. … There’s an actual DEA-held Wells Fargo, it’s a real place, and there was a guy with a clipboard waiting for them, and six armed men, and they excused the other two officers, put them in Ubers? That’s all true. And then they used a two-story counter, this giant electronic counter. So, that moment where the readout is $20 million, and the card [says the same number]? That actually happened.”

These elements were simply recreated. However, The Rip does not present itself as a factual retelling. Carnahan has made that distinction clear. Although arrests were made at the end of the real investigation, publicly available information beyond that point remains limited, offering little insight into the full scope of the events.

Carnahan On The Distinction Between Fact & Fiction

Because most details of the real incident were not public, invention became unavoidable. Carnahan addressed this directly when discussing the balance between fact and fiction.

“[I]t’s like, then you got to invent the rest of it, man,” the filmmaker said. “You’ve got to invent all the little pinwheels and the Rube Goldberg contraption that eventually drops a net over the mouse. But we did have a little more insight into that than somebody who’s just reading about it.”

That additional insight gives The Rip its grounded tone, even as the narrative escalates into intense drama.

The film also continues a recent stretch of collaborations between Damon and Affleck following The Last Duel and Air. Unlike those projects, familiarity gives way to suspicion here. Now streaming on Netflix, The Rip operates between documented circumstance and constructed storytelling. Real events provide the framework, while imagination fills in what history left behind.

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