The 33 greatest Matt Damon movies
Sep. 18, 2024From stealing millions from casinos to getting stranded on Mars, Matt Damon has done it all
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
He has a knack for needing to be rescued, doesn’t he? Since the late 1990s, Matt Damon has enjoyed rarified stardom in Hollywood as one of the industry’s most bankable leading men. Versatile as both a dramatic performer and an action hero, Damon’s movies span a million and one different genres. But which ones should actually be considered his greatest of all time?
Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Damon discovered acting in high school. That’s also where he met his best friend Ben Affleck, who would later become a major Hollywood player in his own right. While at Harvard University, Damon and Affleck drafted the first versions of what would become their 1997 classic Good Will Hunting - a movie that would get them into the rarefied spaces of Hollywood.
At age 18, Damon made his feature film debut with a one-line role in the 1988 movie Mystic Pizza (which famously stars a young Julia Roberts). In 1992, Damon left Harvard to pursue acting full time despite being just 12 credits shy of graduation. Today, Damon is inescapable as one of the biggest movie stars around the world.
In celebration of his ongoing career, these are the 33 greatest movies featuring one-half of Boston’s finest sons.
Directed by Terry Gilliam, this fanciful adventure co-stars Matt Damon and the late Heath Ledger who play the real-life authors Brothers Grimm. In French-occupied Germany during the 19th century, the Grimms are traveling con men who perform bogus exorcisms. But when they encounter real dark magic and terrifying monsters, the Grimms learn to harness their courage - while collecting inspiration for their legendary fairy tales. Pulpy and silly, The Brothers Grimm is ideal for dark and stormy nights.
A shoe is just a shoe until Michael Jordan steps in it. In this breezy business drama directed by Ben Affleck, the origins of the iconic Air Jordan sneaker are revealed. Matt Damon stars in the role of real-life Nike executive Sonny Vaccaro, who signed Jordan to his first sneaker deal at the start of his meteoric NBA career. As light as its title suggests, Air appeals to anyone drawn in by ’80s period movies, the intersection of sports and pop culture, REO Speedwagon needledrops, and the-start-of-something business epics a la The Social Network and BlackBerry. Bonus: Affleck is clearly having fun as a guy who prefers to be barefoot in a posh office.
Don’t tell Scotty! In this raunchy early-aughts comedy, Scott Mechlowicz plays a high school graduate who spends his summer backpacking through Europe to hook up with his hot German pen pal. Matt Damon makes a glorious cameo as the skinhead lead singer of a band who brags in front of Scotty all the ways he’s slept with his girlfriend Fiona without him knowing. (The song “Scotty Doesn’t Know” by Lustra, which became a legit radio hit, is “performed” by Damon in the movie.) EuroTrip isn’t Damon’s finest movie, or really his movie at all, but Damon is simply unforgettable as a dirtbag rocker who can stick his tongue out farther than Gene Simmons.
Sign up for the Total Film Newsletter
Bringing all the latest movie news, features, and reviews to your inbox
Loosely if also brazenly inspired by the real-life case of Amanda Knox, Stillwater stars Matt Damon as an unemployed roughneck from Oklahoma who fights to protect his daughter’s innocence after she’s convicted and imprisoned for the murder of her college roommate in France. While mostly conventional and riddled with cliches, Stillwater succeeds through the performances of its leads (particularly Damon) with a timeless story about fighting for the truth when even justice gets it wrong.
In this World War II drama that gives The Dirty Dozen an MFA degree, Matt Damon reunites with George Clooney to play Allied soldiers who are given a very special task: retrieving and protecting precious works of art before Nazis destroy them. While critics were mostly cynical towards The Monuments Men, citing its uneven and weepy tone, the movie deserves a proper salute in its riveting and aspirational story about protecting culture from reckless annihilation.
In this action-packed sci-fi about the importance of socialized medicine, Matt Damon plays a criminal on parole who lives on eco-ravaged, overpopulated Earth. When an accident gives Damon’s character lethal poisoning with just five days to live, he races against time to get himself aboard the luxurious space station Elysium, where the mega-rich enjoy luxuries including medical treatment that cures anything. As the sophomore effort from director Neill Blomkamp after his game-changing District 9, Elysium was considered a disappointment, but the movie’s pointed political commentary with sci-fi thrills is hard to argue against.
After Ocean’s Twelve bungled the second heist, director Steven Soderbergh got the gang back together for one more round in the most pleasant surprise of 2007, Ocean’s Thirteen. Matt Damon returns to his series role as Linus, this time reuniting with Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and the rest to get back at casino owner Willy Bank (Al Pacino). Yet another slick and entertaining heist movie in the vein of the first Ocean’s Eleven, Ocean’s Thirteen delights in just how much its A-plus cast fire on their perfected cylinders.
In a world divided, great unification can be found in sports. In this stately period drama from director Clint Eastwood, Matt Damon plays real-life South African rugby star Francois Pienaar, who is personally approached by South African President Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) to win the 1995 Rugby World Cup for the good of post-Apartheid South Africa. While Invictus isn’t terribly ambitious as anything more than an inspirational sports drama, the emotions it does stir within is nothing to underestimate.
Its predominant ironic tone is off-putting to many, including critics who gave it mixed reviews. But The Informant! has enough entertainment value to make its story about entrepreneurial conspiracy and embezzlement feel like a gas. Based on the 2000 nonfiction book by Kurt Eichenwald, The Informant! stars Matt Damon as Archer Daniels Midland executive Mark Whitacre, who blew the whistle on the company’s price-fixing of lysine in the 1990s. The FBI recruits Whitacre as a spy to work as an informant against his own company, but Whitacre seems all too thrilled to be a “secret agent.” A more serious approach to Eichenwald’s book would have made for a different movie, but it’s hard to believe it would be any better than the laugh riot we have instead.
The Matrix meets The Manchurian Candidate in this endlessly surprising sci-fi political thriller from director George Nolfi. Based on Philip K. Dick’s 1954 short story “Adjustment Team,” Matt Damon stars as a disgraced New York congressman who falls in love with an enchanting ballerina (Emily Blunt). But the shadowy forces that pull the world’s strings are bizarrely determined to keep them apart. Between a locked-in Damon and its labyrinthine mystery that keeps swerving from expectations, The Adjustment Bureau is something of an underrated highlight in Damon’s long career.
At the start of Matt Damon’s career, the actor had a supporting role in the Meg Ryan/Denzel Washington blockbuster Courage Under Fire. Directed by Edward Zwick, this powerhouse Gulf War-set drama sees Washington playing a Lieutenant Colonel who investigates the case of an army captain (Ryan) and her heroic rescue of a helicopter crew that may posthumously earn her the Medal of Honor, only to realize things are more complicated than they seem. Damon’s role as a drug-addicted soldier gave him his first true exposure as a budding star; critic Rita Kempley, in her review for The Washington Post, called Damon’s performance in the movie “impressive” as a “psychologically emasculated” member of Meg Ryan’s men.
Obsession and possession are mixed into a deadly cocktail in Behind the Candelabra, Steven Soderbergh’s riveting adaptation of the 1988 memoir by Scott Thorson. Based on true events, Matt Damon plays Thorson, a young man who is taken in by the famous pianist Liberace (Michael Douglas) as his personal “companion” and whose luxurious lifestyle is now paid for by Liberace. Over time, Liberace’s vise grip over Scott becomes controlling to the point of obsessiveness, with Scott quietly fighting to claim some of his own independence. Acclaimed by critics, the prestige of Behind the Candelabra marked a turning point for television productions and by HBO specifically to truly rival the cinematic offerings by movie studios.
In this sci-fi epic from animation auteur Don Bluth, Titan A.E. blasts audiences to the outer reaches of space in its story about humans who wander a galaxy full of hostile aliens after Earth is completely destroyed. Matt Damon voices lead protagonist Cale Tucker, a young man whose possession of an important and rare ring holds the key to humanity’s next permanent home. This underrated sci-fi gem memorably combined hand-drawn animation with then cutting-edge CGI, making the picture a symbolic link between different eras of cinematic animation. Although it bombed in theaters, Titan A.E. has grown into a cult classic, boasting a universe of immense potential far bigger than its expansive frames can contain.
Le Mans, 1963. Italian automaker Ferrari is dominant in the prestigious 24 Hours of Le Mans, but the American Ford Motor Company - in an effort to boost lagging sales - enters the race to put some respect on their name. That’s when Matt Damon comes in as Caroll Shelby, an ex-racer and automotive designer who compels British driver Ken Miles (Christian Bale) to work with him on the creation of a car and a team that can outrun both Ferrari and the world where it counts. A handsome motorsports epic about the dangers of chasing artistic perfection under the pressures of capitalism, James Mangold’s Ford v Ferrari is a modern classic that dares to push the needle.
Talk about holy hell. In Kevin Smith’s sacrilegious satire Dogma, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck co-star as exiled angels from heaven who stumble upon a “loophole” on Earth that could bring them back to the pearly gates. Except should they do so, they prove God wrong and thus “unmake the world” (so says an engrossing Alan Rickman as the Metatron). A lonely abortion clinic employee, played by Linda Fiorentino, is tasked by heaven to stop Damon and Affleck’s avenging angels before it’s too late. Arguably the best movie ever from writer/director Kevin Smith yet woefully underrated in both Damon and Affleck’s filmographies, Dogma is an irreverent religious epic that puts the “God” in “Oh my God, dude!”
It’s always a treat to hear Matt Damon in his native Boston accent. In this acclaimed gangster epic from Martin Scorsese (and a remake of the Hong Kong classic Infernal Affairs), Matt Damon leads as a man raised by an Irish mob boss (Jack Nicholson) to work as a spy in Massachusetts state law enforcement. His fate is parallel to that of an undercover state trooper (Leonardo DiCaprio) who is tasked with infiltrating the mob. The Departed is a 21st century classic loaded with intrigue and themes of identity conflicting with obligation, and it’s just unsurprising that a director like Scorsese gets an A-plus performance out of his cast including Damon.
Saving Private Ryan is remembered for a lot of things: The masterful directing by Steven Spielberg, the nightmarish experiences of war that dispel Hollywood-imagined heroism, and Tom Hanks as a surprisingly unsympathetic U.S. captain overcoming his own PTSD. But the movie’s PR-oriented mission is to get Private James Francis Ryan back home safely, and that’s when audiences meet Matt Damon as the titular character, an otherwise ordinary soldier whose life was deemed to have great meaning by those at the top. With a memorable opening sequence set on the beaches of Normandy, Saving Private Ryan climaxes with a thunderous mission to confront German forces in the torn-up village of Ramelle. A true American epic that is deeply sentimental without weeping nostalgia, Saving Private Ryan is not just a great Matt Damon movie but a great movie period.
Being cooler than the Rat Pack is perhaps the greatest heist of the century. Over 40 years after the original Ocean’s Eleven hit theaters, Steven Soderbergh teamed up with A-listers George Clooney, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, and Julia Roberts for a vibrant remake set in 21st century Las Vegas, in which Danny Ocean (Clooney) assembles a killer team to steal a whopping $160 million from a slimy casino owner (Andy Garcia). Soderbergh’s version of Ocean’s Eleven is clever and charismatic, wielding the full might of its many enviable stars. Damon somehow isn’t even the shiniest part of the ensemble - hard to be, when you’ve got Clooney, Pitt, and Roberts on the call sheet too - but Ocean’s Eleven is impossibly great by any measure.
Never forget the immortal words: “I gotta go see about a girl.” Gus Van Sant’s tender drama from 1997 was the calling card for both Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, lifelong friends who came up in Hollywood together through their Oscar-nominated screenplay. Originally conceived by Damon as an action-thriller, the movie evolved into a grounded drama about a young man with superior intelligence who is pushed by different forces into seizing on his gifts or living life the way he deems fit. Damon stars as Will Hunting, who shines in the picture as a brilliant and sharp-witted young man who falls for a beautiful woman (Minnie Driver) while figuring out his path in life. A celebrated picture that also contains one of Robin Williams' most empathetic performances, Good Will Hunting stands the test of time.
Eric Francisco is a freelance entertainment journalist and graduate of Rutgers University. If a movie or TV show has superheroes, spaceships, kung fu, or John Cena, he’s your guy to make sense of it. A former senior writer at Inverse, his byline has also appeared at Vulture, The Daily Beast, Observer, and The Mary Sue. You can find him screaming at Devils hockey games or dodging enemy fire in Call of Duty: Warzone.
Benedict Cumberbatch is returning as Doctor Strange in Avengers: Doomsday alongside Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr.
All of the OG MCU Avengers should return as villains, starting with Avengers: Doomsday
“It’s impossible to not be cocky when you have a game like this”: It Takes Two’s Josef Fares is back and drumming up another Game Awards reveal
