The RIP looks like it’s going to be the Ben Affleck and Matt Damon movie I’ve been waiting for years to see. After famously growing up together and entering the film industry as frequent collaborators, Damon and Affleck have worked together plenty of times — all while establishing themselves as major stars in their own right.

When they do work together on-screen, the results are strong. That seems to be the case for The RIP, which casts the two as a pair of police officers caught in a chaotic series of events. Crime-thrillers have been good for both actors on their own, and I’m incredibly excited to see what they do with the genre together.

Ben Affleck And Matt Damon Are Great In The Thriller Genre (But Have Never Co-Starred In One)

The RIP looks like a compelling thriller, but it’s especially exciting because it finally pairs Matt Damon and Ben Affleck together in a genre they’ve excelled at individually. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon have collaborated on numerous projects, maintaining their lifelong friendship while also pursuing their own careers.

Their on-screen work together includes the Oscar-winning drama Good Will Hunting, Kevin Smith comedies like Dogma, and historical dramas like The Last Duel and Air. Notably, however, the pair have never co-starred in a proper crime thriller together. This is even though some of their best individual films have been in the thriller genre.

Damon has made himself at home in several different corners of the thriller genre, fitting in neatly into the comedic elements of the Ocean’s trilogy or the grounded espionage adventures of Jason Bourne. Damon’s especially memorable in The Departed, where his performance as a dirty cop in the Boston P.D. earned him several award nominations.

Affleck has also been good in the thriller field, of both the more action-heavy and heady dramatic variety. Films like The Accountant prove he can handle the intense action of a crime-thriller, while Gone Baby Gone and especially The Town made a good case for his capabilities in the darker corners of the genre.

Despite this, Damon and Affleck have never been in a crime thriller on-screen together. The closest audiences have ever come to that is Damon’s collaborations with Ben’s brother Casey Affleck, who co-starred alongside Damon in Doug Liman’s The Instigators and the aforementioned Ocean‘s movies. However, The RIP seems to be more than making up for lost time.

Ben Affleck And Matt Damon Are Finally Uniting For A Crime Thriller

The trailers for The RIP set the stage for the best of both corners of the genre. On the one hand, the trailer features plenty of tense moments and bursts of gunfire, indicating that the simmering tension of the plot will explode into plenty of shoot-outs, car chases, and fist fights.

Both Damon and Affleck have experience in the action genre, meaning they’ll likely quickly adapt to whatever kind of action the film takes. The trailer also goes a long way to establishing the kind of intensity that will be at play in the crime thriller.

At the center of the story seems to be Damon’s Dane Dumars and Affleck’s JD Byrne, a pair of Miami officers whose trust is thrown into question when their team discovers a fortune that could get them killed. Both actors have delivered strong, morally tricky performances in the crime-thriller genre, which The RIP seems to be mining to good effect.

The trailer depicts JD Byrne as a conflicted character, whose mistrust of Dumars steadily grows across the released footage. In contrast, the cool and friendlier nature of Dumars is undercut by Damon’s gift for making unᴀssuming figures into dangerous villains.

The trailer for The RIP gives off some naturally tense energy that feels right at home for the two actors, making it all the more surprising that this is the first time they’ve gotten to flex these same creative muscles in the same project.

Affleck and Damon work well together, and they always have. Their genuine friendship translates well to the big screen in films like Dogma and Good Will Hunting, and a similar dynamic could help ensure audiences sympathize with their duo when they’re introduced in The RIP.

That familiarity, coupled with the fact that both of them have proven so unpredictable in the genre, is what makes The RIP such an exciting project for them. The trailer sets the stage for a twisty thriller where any character can turn out to be a threat, including partners like Byrne and Dumars.

The RIP trailer features plenty of intriguing elements, but the fact that audiences are finally getting to see Damon and Affleck bounce off one another in the crime-thriller genre is the aspect that has me the most excited. Affleck and Damon have both had their ups and downs, but both do well together and in this genre, especially.

Seeing them actively in a crime-thriller together, especially one that promises a mix of action set-pieces and dramatic moral quandaries that the genre can typically produce, is a great selling point for the film. Especially after seeing the full trailer, I’m excited for The RIP to showcase the two lifelong friends in a thriller.