Summary
Rebel Ridge reinvents the Rambo myth to the fresh, contemporary purpose of tearing through systemic injustice. It’s a wildly satisfying and expertly-crafted ride.
Action movies have been knocking off First Blood ever since it debuted in 1982, but Jeremy Saulnier’s Rebel Ridge is the rare example of a riff that doesn’t just mimic the format but does so well and smartly updates it.
You should have known with Saulnier, a filmmaker who has proven his tense action bona fides over and over again, first in Blue Ruin and Green Room and then in Hold the Dark, which is also, like Rebel Ridge, on Netflix. But this production was unusually torrid, with delays thanks first to the COVID-19 pandemic and then to John Boyega, who dropped out of the project citing family reasons shortly after principal photography began.
It’s easy to wonder what could have been with Boyega playing the part, but it takes no effort to imagine the upcoming career trajectory of Aaron Pierre, who replaced him. If nothing else, Rebel Ridge has birthed an exciting new action star for the streaming age.
Pierre plays Terry, a man with – all together now – a particular set of skills. He’s an ex-Marine, which isn’t unusual, but specifically, a hand-to-hand combat instructor, which is, in a way. He isn’t an overseas veteran nursing PTSD; he’s a very calm and patient teacher who is aware of his lethality but is determined not to express it – until a combination of racial profiling and systemic self-interest forces his hand.
The plot is kick-started when Terry is ambushed while cycling through the Southern town of Shelby Springs, hoping to bail out his cousin, Mike (C.J. LeBlanc), who’s in jail on a misdemeanor possession charge. But that isn’t the problem. Mike is also a witness in a big-time murder trial, and if he’s processed, he’ll be recognized and killed. This makes it especially galling when David Denman’s Officer Marston elects to seize the bail money Terry is carrying on the vague grounds that it’s drug-related.
Thanks to the somewhat nebulous legal practice of civil asset forfeiture, the only way Terry can get his dough back is by contesting the seizure in court, by which point Mike would be dead. The whole thing stinks, but for the benefit of Terry and the audience a well-meaning legal aide named Summer (AnnaSophia Robb) fills him in on the details. Since the local police department has been hamstrung by a civil suit that won’t allow them to be corrupt anymore, they’re exploiting the asset forfeiture to fund the department.
Once the cops – led by Chief Sandy Burnne (Don Johnson) – realize Terry isn’t going to go away, they round up a posse to see him off. And thus we have our movie.
Rebel Ridge | Image via Netflix
Pierre is great in Rebel Ridge. Terry might not be the most demanding part, but it is a balancing act of coiled efficiency, fraying patience, and bursts of smooth, predator-like competence that isn’t easy to pull off, and Pierre handles it with considerable skill. Saulnier meets him halfway with clear camera work that knows when to take in everything and when to let close-ups and facial expressions do the heavy lifting.
It’s a surprisingly bloodless movie, too. Terry’s forte is jiujitsu and other forms of safety-first martial arts, so the action has a fun, almost playful quality to it, with Terry just disarming Podunk cops and twisting their arms up their backs for the most part – at least until the stakes become a little more serious later on.
But it’s the themes that add something more tangible. The argument about profiling is there, but it’s less emphasized than the one about corruption in general, of which it is an obvious part. Shelby Springs Police Department is blasé, even entitled about manipulating laws and exploiting bureaucracy to line their pockets, and anyone is subject to reprisal for not toeing the line. If they’re Black like Terry, or vulnerable in some way like Summer – she’s a recovering addict – then all the better.
The ease with which these cops cook up plausibility for their abuses of power is the alarming thing. When you’re already funding the department through illegal asset seizure, upsetting a child custody battle with a forced drug overdose is a small affair. The levers of power are pulled with practiced efficiency, each link in the chain providing another obstacle for well-meaning people to get any semblance of justice.
The power fantasy of Rebel Ridge, then, is not the physical one of Terry putting uniformed officers in shoulder locks. It’s the idea of someone being able to contort the system – yes, through jiu-jitsu, but also determination, principle, and a refusal to ignore injustice – into something resembling a fair one, where people who’re needlessly mistreated get their own back, and those who exploit the system for their gain get their comeuppance.
On that level alone, it’s a wildly satisfying action movie.
