Matt Damon has had a long run of success since his breakout Academy Award-winning film Good Will Hunting way back in the late 90s. We’re big fans and so is Netflix, the streaming service now offering some solid Damon hits. Here’s what you should watch.
Hereafter
What happens once we die? Is there something else after all of this? It’s kept many of us up at night more than once and been inspiration for what seems countless books and movies. This Clint Eastwood-directed film tells three parallel stories of people who are each dealing with death in similar ways – they can communicate with the afterlife. Damon plays George Lonegan, a factory worker who can speak with the dead but doesn’t want to, being a kind of reluctant psychic, burdened by the secrets and pain such powers give him. Featuring a stunning opening moment that re-enacts the 2004 Indian tsunami, the movie is actual a quiet experience that avoids much of the conventional histrionics and visual effects the genre generally clings to. While it might not be all that energetic, it is nonetheless a thoughtful and compelling story well worth exploring.
Promised Land
Written by Damon and John Krasinski (A Quiet Place), this Gus Van Sant–directed drama is about a resource extraction process of hydraulic fracturing, called “fracking,” and while that might not seem all that interesting, it actually sort of is, especially with Damon, Krasinski and Frances McDormand in front of the camera. Damon is Steve Butler, an enterprising employees at Global Crosspower Solutions, a company that obtains natural gas trapped underground through fracking. Butler is very good at getting land owners to sign over their property, yet when he arrives in a poor part of Pennsylvania with his partner (McDormand), they run afoul of an old farmer (Hal Holbrook) and an environmentalist (Krasinski) that changes everything. Van Sant doesn’t make action pictures and here, relies on these broadly drawn characters to tell this complicated tale. Not for everyone, this is one for fans of actors, with Damon leading the charge with a terrific turn as a man who uncovers a dark secret. Good stuff.
The Informant!
Steven Soderbergh‘s biographical-crime-comedy is a genuinely funny and eye-opening movie, with Damon playing Mark Whitacre, a highly-praised employee of Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), an American global food processing company, who becomes a star whistleblower in a world-wide scandal. Earning loads of acclaim for his witty and sharply-comedic performance, the film follows Whitcare as he confesses to the FBI about a price-fixing scheme that he and his company are involved with, agreeing to wear a wire to gather evidence in a criminal case. However, his bipolar disorder and his general inability to handle the stress cause myriad problems that lead to a very funny meltdown. Based on real events, the film is not only filled with great humor, but is a deeply-fascinating story that is almost mind-boggling in its truth. Well-directed and handling the ups and downs of the film’s rollercoaster tone very well, this is a must see, if only to Damon watch do some of his very best work.
The Bourne Ultimatum
The third film in the long-running franchise, Damon plays the titular former CIA assassin, still searching for the truth about his past and how he came to be wanted and on the run. With director Paul Greengrass back at the helm after the second chapter, The Bourne Supremacy, the film continues its tradition of high-octane action and plenty of tech-spy babble as Bourne makes his way from Moscow to London to New York City. Considered by many to be the best in the series, it’s helped by some great supporting work from Joan Allen and David Strathairn among many who help to deliver an intelligent thriller alongside some terrific set pieces. Damon is well-settled into the role and truly makes Bourne his own, the stoic brutality and swift urgency so famously part of the character made all the more convincing by his stellar work. This redefined the genre for several years.
The Departed
Director Martin Scorsese‘s multiple Academy Award-winning film is still one of the best of its kind ever made, with a remarkable cast, a smart story, and a genuine authenticity about it that is almost unsettling. Damon plays Colin Sullivan, a Irishman working for a mobster deep inside the Boston Police Department’s organized crime unit. On the other side of the coin, Billy Costigan (Leonardo Di Caprio) is a police detective deep undercover in the mob, and it’s only a matter of time before these two clash. Acting alongside the likes of Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, Mark Wahlberg, and Jack Nicholson, Damon does great work even as he must share screen time with some very heavy-hitters. A film that is surely studied for its influence and impact (itself a remake of the 2002 Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs), this is the best Matt Damon movie playing on Netflix right now, and one you need to see (again).