Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Instigators on Apple TV+. Read at your own risk!
Last year, rapper Jack Harlow launched his acting career with the 2023 remake of White Men Can’t Jump, and now’s back in the acting saddle again in the new Matt Damon movie, The Instigators, which began streaming on Apple TV+ on Friday. But—spoiler alert—fans of Harlow shouldn’t get too attached to his character in this new heist comedy. Because Harlow’s character, Scalvo, gets brutally murdered in the first 20 minutes. And before that, he gets tortured by way of waterboarding. It’s not exactly the same type of fun-time romp that Harlow had in White Men Can’t Jump!
Directed by Doug Liman, and written by Casey Affleck and Chuck Maclean, The Instigators starts Damon and Affleck as Rory and Cobby, respectively. As the only survivors of a heist robbery gone terribly wrong, the two Boston men are forced to go on the run together. Harlow’s character, Scalvo, is the criminal who brings Damon and Affleck together for the job. In Harlow’s first scene in the movie, we see that he had no choice.
Harlow first appears on screen in The Instigators as he’s being waterboarded by Spider-Man‘s own Alfred Molina, while mob boss Mr. Besegai (Michael Stuhlbarg) screams at him for botching a job. Molina holds Harlow’s head under a gushing sink faucet in an industrial kitchen, with a gun to his head. If you’ve ever wanted to see Jack Harlow soaking wet and pleading for his life, today is your lucky day.
Scalvo tells his boss he can find him two guys willing to do a new job: robbing the corrupt mayor of Boston. Basically, the fictional Boston Mayor Miccelli (Ron Perlman) is about to win re-election. He is expected to take a lot of under-the-table cash donations on election night. Rory, Cobby, and Scalvo’s job is to rob that event and steal those donations. But thanks to Scalvo’s shoddy recon, the job almost immediately goes wrong. When they get to the safe, they discover almost no cash. Apparently, there were so many donations that the safe has already been emptied and taken to a secure location. In desperation, Scalvo robs the mayor and his pals at gunpoint.
In an interview for the official Instigators production notes, Harlow described his character as “really thirsty for validation. [He] wants to be the boss someday, but he finds out quickly that he’s in over his head.”
That’s a bit of an understatement. Scalvo quickly learns that pointing the gun at the mayor in front of an armed police officer is a bad idea. At the mayor’s urging, a cop shoots Scalvo right in the forehead. He drops to the ground, dead as a door nail. And just like that, Harlow’s twenty minutes of the movie are over.
No doubt this will disappoint a few fans watching the movie just for the rapper’s sake. After all, the people were excited. In that same interview, co-writer Chuck MacLean said, “I got more text messages about Jack Harlow being cast than I did about the thing getting made.”
But at least Harlow made the most of his short time on screen. “It was great to see how confident and flexible he was,” Affleck said, noting that this is only Harlow’s second-ever movie. “He came in with 10 good ideas for every scene. It was as if he’d been acting for a really long time.”
And for Harlow, even if his screen time was short, it was a chance to work with a respected action director, Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity, Mr. & Mrs. Smith).
“You definitely feel a gravity, like you’re working with a genius,” Harlow said. “He had such a desire to make every moment great. I was taking notes, absorbing, the whole time. People are in for something unique and fresh here. Doug has done something classic and timeless.”
