‘Rebel Ridge’ Review

With ‘Rebel Ridge’, Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin, Green Room) continues the long tradition of movies about corrupt, small town police forces that start harassing the wrong guy. From ‘First Blood’ to ‘Walking Tall’ and ‘Jack Reacher’, this specific sub-genre has stood the test of time, feeding an audience craving for underdog action heroes, an everyman with an unknown badass backstory, rebelling against a degenerate system. There’s a certain wish fulfillment to this story, seeing a hero underestimated and taken for granted only to defy all expectations and save the day.

In ‘Rebel Ridge’, that hero is Terry Richmond (Aaron Pierre), a former Marine who sells all of his belongings to afford bail for his cousin, who is being held on misdemeanor drug charges in a small Louisiana town. Of course as soon as he enters this town, he is profiled, abused and threatened by the local police, led by Chief Sandy Burnne (Don Johnson). Terry eventually teams up with an upstanding courthouse employee, Summer (AnnaSophia Robb) to investigate the town police force and save his cousin.

What follows is mostly what you would expect from a movie like this: the villainous police force is appropriately nefarious, and the stoic, hulking Terry storms through the town, delivering justice with his fists. There are times when the film bristles against the regular, shallow action tropes: a Don Johnson monologue about how this rural police force is underfunded, the last police force out of six surrounding towns due to budget cuts; ideas of how the criminal justice system can fail people charged with simple misdemeanors; an entire action sequence taking place with non-lethal weapons, a sign of modernizing police forces.

But these loftier purposes are thrown aside, as the movie shifts into its standard action patterns. While there are some clever twists and character beats, the film figures the viewer wants to see our hero beat up our bad guys, and doesn’t want to distract too much with other ideas.

The performances throughout are solid and understated, even if the actors aren’t asked to do too much. Pierre plays the stoic hero well, his voice and size delivering the intimidation factor required of the role, but this isn’t a character that demands a lot of range. Robb is quality as the wannabe-good civil servant trying to fix a broken system from within. As the primary antagonists, Don Johnson and Emory Cohen revel in the villainy. These are not complex people, they are Bad Guys, and Johnson and Cohen deliver characters that you enjoy hating. James Cromwell pops up briefly, gives a Louisiana accent, and then leaves.

This is Saulnier’s second film for Netflix, and as with ‘Hold the Dark’, he doesn’t quite deliver on the promise from his earlier films: ‘Blue Ruin’ and ‘Green Room’. The well crafted tension, suspense, and sly humor from those movies can be found here if you squint, but it doesn’t feel as expertly honed as I would hope given the high expectations that were set from his previous output.

The plot and character motivations can get convoluted, but let’s be honest, that’s not why we’re here. As much as Saulnier tries at times to challenge the genre conventions, particularly with a bold and surprising climax, ‘Rebel Ridge’ ultimately serves as an entertaining, if slightly redundant, addition to a well worn action sub-genre. A little long, a little formulaic, but an enjoyable way to spend a few hours.

Rebel Ridge
Rated TV-MA
Running Time: 2 hours and 11 minutes

Director Jeremy Saulnier
Writers Jeremy Saulnier
Stars Aaron Pierre, Don Johnson, AnnaSophia Robb, David Denman, Emory Cohen, Steve Zissis, Zsané Jhé, Dana Lee, James Cromwell
Rating TV-MA
Running Time 131 Minutes
Genres Action, Thriller