The worst thing about Netflix’s mysteriously abandoned thriller Rebel Ridge is its abysmally generic title. It sounds like an anonymous action slop starring a lesser-known Hemsworth, and one might expect that, along with a brawn-over-brains trailer and a barely-there PR campaign, it’s another of the streaming platform’s low-impact time-wasters.
But there’s a lot more to chew on here, a full three-course meal appearing on a platform that typically distracts us with snacks, and one of the most damning arguments you can make against a big-name filmmaker associating with them, a film that deserved the most and was somehow hurt by the least.
Director: Jeremy SaulnierWriter: Jeremy SaulnierStars: Aaron Pierre, Don Johnson, AnnaSophia Robb
Writer-director Jeremy Saulnier, who came to prominence with Blue Ruin and then the magnificently twisted Green Room, worked with Netflix for his uneven adaptation of Hold the Dark in 2018, a film that at least had a premiere at the Toronto film festival. Its sequel has found itself strangely adrift, without even a token theatrical release and cruelly landing in the middle of the fall festival season, but without a spot in Venice, Telluride or Toronto.
Maybe it’s the curse that began in 2020 when production was halted just weeks after Covid began and continued after a reboot in May 2021, which was halted again the following month when original star John Boyega dropped out. It had to wait until the following year for everything to come back together, sans Boyega, and now, two years later, it lands without fanfare when it deserves a parade.
It begins with an immediately enveloping nightmare. Terry (now played by Old and Brother’s Aaron Pierre) is riding his bike down a country road when a police car hits him, forcing him to the ground. Vague, unfounded accusations are thrown around (tensions are heightened by race: Terry is a black man being questioned by two white police officers) and when they search his bag, they find money.
Terry explains that he is heading out to rescue his cousin, but the police will keep the money anyway and he can file a complaint to get it back, a lengthy process that would put his cousin in danger: a key witness in a gangland murder trial heading to state prison with a target on his back. He then gets caught up in a convoluted system, facing both local law enforcement with an agenda and a country that allows those with power to take easy and legal advantage.
What follows is a curious and utterly compelling mix of small-town western, Taken-like action thriller (Terry is lucky to have a very particular set of skills) and grim, topical social drama. What is so remarkable is Saulnier’s commitment and success in taking care of every aspect equally, a full-body workout for us as viewers, pulse racing and brain busy, a two-plus hour saga that keeps us totally enthralled at every second. That may seem like low-grade praise, but Saulnier’s writing has a refreshing clarity (a clock being set, stakes fixed before resetting, stakes raised and then raised again) and a maturity in the way it controls the genre’s more intense elements.
The reveal of Terry’s background (a Marine with hand-to-hand combat experience) is something we’ve grown a little tired of, largely thanks to Liam Neeson, but here it’s handled with more realism and some humor, a portrait of a man keenly aware of his physical strengths who tries to use them intelligently within the confines of the law (there’s a fantastically well-choreographed scene in which he uses his body for the first time to gain expert control of an escalating situation).
Terry gets a partner in local paralegal Summer (the child actress who did well, AnnaSophia Robb), who educates him on the depressing complexities of a broken legal system and helps him because she’s a victim of it, too. Saulnier's laundry list of grievances is maddening, but it's detailed without being over-the-top, despite the many social ills being thrown at us (plus, it's a lot funnier than you might expect). There's a rising tide of anger that's impossible not to get swept up in (the sensation is sometimes reminiscent of watching a series of John Oliver segments in one sitting) and it amplifies any emotional commitment we already have to the human drama, thanks to Pierre and Robb. They make an incredibly engaging and dynamic duo, bound together by shared fury and frustration, while as the main antagonist, Don Johnson is a suitably vile, but never over-the-top, sheriff.
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