Actors Matt Damon and Casey Affleck team up again for another heist comedy The Instigators

LOS ANGELES – In Ocean’s Eleven (2001), Matt Damon and Casey Affleck played members of a skilled team of robbers who pull off an elaborate series of heists.

And the American actors, both Oscar winners, have now re-teamed for another heist comedy, The Instigators.

But this time, they play two inept criminals – desperate divorced dad Rory (Damon) and former convict Cobby (Affleck) – who bungle a simple robbery and have to go on the run.

Debuting on Apple TV+ on Aug 9, the movie was co-written by Affleck, 48, and counts his actor-brother Ben Affleck, 51, and Damon, 53, among its producers.

Damon and Ben Affleck are famous for being long-time friends and collaborators, having shared the spotlight since writing and starring in the drama Good Will Hunting (1997) – the breakout hit that won the duo a Best Original Screenplay Oscar.

But Damon and Casey Affleck have been friends for just as long, they say.

Chatting with The Straits Times and other press over Zoom, Damon – who starred in the science-fiction drama The Martian (2015) and psychological thriller The Talented Mr Ripley (1999) – says: “We’re very close. We grew up together and we’ve been in each other’s lives for 43 years now.

“Casey’s a little younger so when we were teens, he was maybe the guy tagging along a little bit.

“But then we were all out in Los Angeles together when he was 18 and Ben and I were in our early 20s, and we all lived together and struggled as actors together.”

“So we’ve been through every phase of life together since we were kids,” adds Damon, who co-starred with Casey Affleck in the adventure drama Gerry (2002) and also appeared alongside him in the rest of the Ocean’s trilogy (2001 to 2007).

The Instigators joins a growing list of Damon-and-Affleck films set in Massachusetts, where the three grew up.

This includes Good Will Hunting; The Town (2010), a crime thriller starring and directed by Ben Affleck; and the 2016 drama Manchester By The Sea, which earned Casey Affleck a Best Actor Oscar.

The new movie sees Rory and Cobby racing around Boston with Rory’s therapist, Dr Rivera (Hong Chau), in tow.

And the dialogue captures the city’s distinct sense of humour. “It’s a very cynical, sarcastic brand of humour, and a bit fatalistic,” Damon says.

Affleck adds: “You can be self-deprecating and superior at the same time.”

Cobby and Rory are together for most of the film, and for the actors, it was easy being scene partners.

“We have a giant reservoir of common experience because we’ve known each other for so long,” Damon says.

“Before we do a scene, Casey might say, ‘Do you remember that guy?’, and he’ll tell me something from our childhood and say, ‘I want to put that in somewhere.’

“Or when we’re rewriting something, we’ll talk about it in terms of things we’ve seen before.”

And the two are often just on the same wavelength, says Affleck.

“We have similar tastes and we like to think about how and why people behave the way they do, so the psychology of the characters is very interesting to us.

“We’re both exploring that when we do scenes, and making space for the ideas we each have.”

The film also reunites Damon with 59-year-old American film-maker Doug Liman, who directed him in the hit thriller The Bourne Identity (2002) – the movie that launched him as an action star.

“I love working with him,” the actor says. “All the things he did well 20 years ago, he still does really well.

“It’s chaotic, creatively speaking, because Doug is really open to finding the best idea and is really inclusive on set.”

And Damon says Liman, who helmed crowd-pleasers like Mr & Mrs Smith (2005) and Edge Of Tomorrow (2014), was fully on board with making a very different kind of heist movie – not the classic caper “where you’re watching people be clever and navigate around the system built to keep them at bay”.

“We wanted something really fun, fast and light. And it’s also kind of a heightened reality, which Doug does so well,” says the star. “So I was very happy to work with him again.”