MIAMI — Two South Florida police officers claim Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s recent action thriller The Rip used too many real-life details in its fictionalised narrative, causing harm to the officers’ personal and professional reputations, according to a defamation lawsuit.
Jason Smith and Jonathan Santana, sergeants in the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, filed the lawsuit in Miami federal court earlier this month against Artists Equity, a film production company owned by Affleck and Damon. Court filings don’t say how much the officers are suing for, but the civil complaint says they’re seeking compensatory damages, punitive damages and attorney fees, as well as a public retraction and correction.
The Rip features Affleck and Damon as South Florida police officers who find millions of dollars inside a house. Parts of the movie were inspired by a real 2016 case, where police found over US$21 million (S$27 million) linked to a suspected marijuana trafficker in a Miami Lakes home.
Affleck and Damon have said while promoting the film that the story is loosely based on accounts from Miami-Dade Police Capt. Chris Casiano, who served as a technical advisor on the film. Damon told The Associated Press during a January interview that he and Affleck spent time with Casiano and other narcotics officers in preparation for the film.
“We really wanted to kind of understand what those dynamics were like,” Damon said. “I mean, these units are very tight because they’re really putting their lives in each other’s hands, and they’re doing something that’s very dangerous.”
An attorney for Artists Equity declined to comment when reached Monday by the AP. But in a March 19 response to the plaintiffs’ demand letter, Leita Walker, an attorney for Artists Equity, wrote that the film does not purport to tell the true story of that incident or portray real people, which had been stated by a disclaimer in the film’s credits.
Although Smith and Santana aren’t named in the film and weren’t involved in its production, the lawsuit claims that Santana was serving as the lead detective assigned to the real case, and Smith was the sergeant who supervised the investigative team. The film’s inclusion of real details about the case gives the impression that the characters are based on the plaintiffs, the suit said.
This, the lawsuit claims, has given friends, family members and colleagues the impression that the plaintiffs committed the criminal acts that appear in the film, which include (spoiler alert) conspiring to steal seized drug money, murdering a supervising officer, communicating with cartel members, committing arson in a residential neighbourhood, endangering the lives of civilians, repeatedly violating core law-enforcement protocols and executing a federal agent rather than making an arrest.
Walker wrote in March that the plaintiffs haven’t even identified which particular character is supposed to be based on Smith or Santana, so even if The Rip was actually about a real-life narcotics team, there’s no way to connect any of the characters to the plaintiffs.
The Rip, directed by Joe Carnahan, debuted in January on Netflix. It’s currently rated 78 per cent Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.
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