There are a lot of crime films that take place in Boston, but none of them are this fun.

Doug Liman’s new comedy thriller has had as interesting a release strategy as he’s had as a director. The Matt Damon and Casey Affleck led buddy crime flick released in a paltry amount of theaters last weekend before dropping exclusively on Apple TV+. The budget of the film isn’t yet available online but considering the huge name actors and the amount of destruction brought to the streets of Boston in practical effects, it’s safe to assume the budget was pretty high.

This strategy may be the result of the box office bomb that was Argylle. A film Apple spent 200 million dollars to make and couldn’t even make half that back at the box office. Apple potentially decided to forgo a wide release to save money on marketing and just release the film on their streaming service. A new movie with Matt Damon and an Affleck might not be the kind of thing that gets butts in theater seats anymore, but it certainly feigns enough interest for a couch watch on a Friday evening.

It’s a real shame though because The Instigators is by and large a terrific movie. Casey Affleck and Matt Damon have great chemistry, Jack Harlow is perfectly cast as a dimwitted want-to-be gangster, and Hong Chau continues to be the perfect actress for any role. The script is also great, with a believable premise and jokes that land more often than not. There are big car chases and huge building explosions all set against a fun crime caper with two leads who are out of their element.

The main plot involves an easy heist to steal money from the current mayor of Boston. A perfectly cast Ron Pearlman who hasn’t had this much fun in a movie since the Hellboy flicks. Matt Damon is a former Marine who takes the job as a means to pay off some debts and Casey Affleck is a wisecracking lifetime crook with a drinking problem. The two take the job with an overconfident Jack Harlow leading the team who inevitably messes everything up, leaving Damon and Affleck to go on the lam.

The best part of The Instigators is how much fun everyone is having making this film. It’s an incredibly Boston movie. Casey Affleck spends about half the film in a Dartmouth sweatshirt and the other half drinking whiskey in an Irish pub. Oh, and Ron Gronkowski is in it. But it all feels very real to the city and the characters who live there. There have been a lot of crime movies set in Boston, from Scorsese’s The Departed to Ben Afflecks The Town, and Clint Eastwoods Mystic River. Every director it seems wants the chance to direct a crime saga in the city of Boston. Here Liman gets his chance but instead of a Dennis Lehane novel, he’s working with an original script written by Chuck Maclean and Casey Affleck.

All Boston crime dramas tend to have one thing in common. There are all so damn serious. That’s fine, I love a good serious crime flick, but The Instigators breaks that mold and instead makes a movie that drops the bravado and just has fun. Neither of the leads take themselves too seriously, constantly cracking jokes at one another while hiding from gunfire. There are multiple Mission Impossible style car chases, one involving a stolen fire truck. And there’s a greedy Donald Trump adjacent corrupt mayor with a safe full of cash and secrets that gets dumped on a Ford F150 while House of Pain plays in the background. It’s silly and fun and just the type of movie Doug Liman excels at making.

Liman first came to prominence after his second film Swingers. A low-budget film from writer and star Jon Favreau about Los Angeles transplants trying desperately to be cool in the coolest city on earth. It’s an oddball movie that shockingly became a hit, launching his career as well as the careers of Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn. After Swingers Liman directed the fantastically underrated Go, before moving into the realm of action flicks. He has since directed a number of action comedy flicks ranging from good to not so good. For every Edge of Tomorrow, there’s a Mr and Mrs Smith but fortunately, for every Road House remake, there seems to also be The Instigators.

The Instigators may not be the best film in Doug Liman’s repertoire, but it is odd to see him direct two straight to streaming action comedies with big names attached. This isn’t a new trend and maybe it shouldn’t be so surprising that Doug Liman is taking this approach. His films often feel like great streaming titles that wouldn’t play well in theaters. I fear The Instigators wouldn’t have done well with a wide theatrical release but after Deadpool and Wolverine, it appears audiences are less adverse to hard R-rated films. It’s not the box office cap we used to think and The Instigators could have turned out to be a pleasant surprise for Apple, especially landing on the same weekend as Borderlands and It Ends With Us.

Instead, we get this movie on streaming and that’s good enough. This would have been a great movie to see in theaters. It’s fun and the action is solid but these types of movies are far too often failing at the box office only to find a second life on streaming services. Apple decided to just drop the middleman and use this project as a marketing tool for their streaming platform.

The Instigators is a great summer movie but far from what Hollywood likes to put into theaters. The only new IPs we seem to get are horror flicks from Neon or low-budget thrillers from M. Night Shyamalan. Instead of seeing this flick on the big screen, our picks this weekend are a Colleen Hoover adaption or a video game adaption that currently sits at 6% on Rotten Tomatoes. I try not to lament the state of Hollywood but when a movie like this skips theaters in service of a 6-year-old video game turned movie and a lifetime original movie starring Blake Lively, it’s a shame. Some people are still making good original films, unfortunately, they are getting dumped on streaming services instead of the big screen. I give The Instigators an 8 for being the most fun two criminals have ever had in Boston.