Rebel Ridge, the new movie from Jeremy Saulnier that debuted on Netflix last weekend, isn’t likely to win many representation awards from the Fraternal Order of Police. It depicts cops as amoral, corrupt scum eager to rob people blind via civil asset forfeiture. While it has elements of militant anti-cop fervor and the attitudes that inspired the original First Blood, this film’s neither didactic nor an agenda-first political screed. It’s inventive, focused on storytelling first and featuring a half-dozen dynamite set pieces. It’s outstanding, although I would’ve loved to see Rebel Ridge on a big screen with an audience. Saulnier, who wrote and directed, also made Blue Ruin, Green Room, and Hold the Dark; this is his first new film in six years.
Aaron Pierre plays Terry Richmond, introduced as an ex-Marine biking into a small Louisiana town. He’s carried a lot of cash—meant to bail out his cousin before he’s transferred to a prison where people want the cousin dead — with a bit left over to buy a truck. However, a pair of corrupt deputies who might as well be named Enos and Cletus (David Denman and Emory Cohen) detain him and seize the $36,000 he has. The remainder of the film is about Terry battling that evil department (led by crooked sheriff Don Johnson).
What makes Rebel Ridge so satisfying is its specificity. Terry isn’t merely a badass killing machine; the movie would be less interesting if he were. He’s a guy who’s specifically skilled at close-quarters combat and is good at going up against someone with a gun and taking that gun away. In the film’s best scene, he’s mid-confrontation when an officer back in the office suddenly realizes, via a Wikipedia entry in which he’s mentioned, that he has that skill.
The action scenes are well-mounted and coherent. The film also makes compelling plot points out of procedures for saved dashcam footage and the often-unfair usage of civil asset forfeiture as a cash cow for unscrupulous law enforcement agencies. Pierre, best known as “Mid-Sized Sedan” in M. Night Shyamalan’s Old, was a replacement for another British actor, Star Wars sequel co-star John Boyega, who reportedly departed the project by checking out of his hotel without telling anyone; the change is for the better. The actor, who was also in Barry Jenkins’ Amazon series The Underground Railroad, is a compelling leading man.
Don Johnson has a fantastic second act to his career, while AnnaSophia Robb makes an impression as a low-level court clerk who helps Terry. James Cromwell—whose best screen turn in L.A. Confidential was as a corrupt police captain—turns up as a judge.