Someone really wants Jack Harlow’s movie-star career to happen, even if it only happens in nostalgia-depended straight-to-streaming films. Last year, Harlow made his acting debut in Hulu’s widely ignored White Men Can’t Jump remake. Later this summer, Harlow will return to screens, starring alongside Ocean’s Eleven veterans Matt Damon and Casey Affleck in a new heist film called The Instigators. (Ocean’s Eleven reunions are so hot right now; we’re also about to get George Clooney and Brad Pitt in Wolfs.)
The Instigators is a new Apple TV+ production from Doug Liman, who previously directed Matt Damon in The Bourne Identity. (Earlier this year, Liman directed Amazon’s dumb-fun Road House remake, which had Post Malone as an underground fighter.) Casey Affleck co-wrote The Instigators, and Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are among the producers. You will not be surprised to learn that it’s is set in Boston.
Jack Harlow is part of a supporting cast that’s otherwise full of great character actors: Hong Chau, Michael Stuhlbarg, Paul Walter Hauser, Ving Rhames, Alfred Molina, Ron Perlman. Judging by the trailer, Harlow will be part of the heist crew. He’s got one laugh line in the preview, and it’s bitten directly, almost word for word, from something that Stringer Bell said on The Wire. Watch the trailer below.
The last time an Affleck was involved in a Boston heist film with a white rapper in the supporting cast, it was La Coka Nostra member Slaine in The Town, and he did a great job. This looks like a different thing, but I will definitely watch it. The Instigators opens in theaters 8/2, and it comes to Apple TV+ a week later.