Aaron Pierre (front, centre) and Don Johnson (right) in Rebel Ridge, an action thriller about a former Marine who confronts corruption in a small town when local law enforcement unjustly seizes the bag of cash he needs to post his cousin’s bail. Photo: Supplied.
It comes as a surprise, but Rebel Ridge is an action thriller that’s forceful, fierce and gripping. It’s also a convincing social drama.
Minding his own business, former Marine Terry Richmond (Aaron Pierre, Old, The Underground Railroad) sets out to help his cousin and provide reassurance and succour in his hour of need. He rides into the town of Shelby Springs on a simple but urgent mission – to post bail for Mike Simmons (CJ LeBlanc) and save him from imminent danger. However, when Terry’s life savings are unjustly seized by law enforcement, he’s forced to go head-to-head with local police chief Sandy Burnne (Don Johnson, Knives Out, Miami Vice) and his combat-ready officers.
Years after serving as a Marine, he works at a Chinese restaurant and tries to stay out of trouble. Now that doesn’t stop trouble from coming for him – and come for him it does. Terry’s motorbike is rammed and he’s detained by two police officers, Evan Marston (David Denman) and Steve Lann (Emory Cohen), who seize his $36,000 via civil forfeiture despite the money being legitimate.
Efforts to get to the police station are thwarted at every step. When he is finally able to get to the courthouse, the clerk refuses to help. Another employee, Summer McBride (AnnaSophia Robb, Soul Surfer, The Act), comes to the rescue. She promises to prepare the forms in case Terry can find the required $10,000 before Mike’s transfer to state prison where he could be in danger for informing on a gangster.
When Terry does go to the police station, he tries to report the cash as stolen, but is confronted by Lann and Burnne. Terry offers to drop the matter if he gets $10,000 back for bail. However, he is told to return and resolve the issue on Monday.
Patience only lasts for a little while longer. Terry has rigid principles and a deadly set of skills that just might get him out of this nightmare alive. He decides to confront the whirlwind of police corruption and small-town prejudice. That’s when the showdown turns from a slow burn to all-out rage!
Terry is endlessly focused as he navigates and manages the situations with composure. The violence comes in spurts after we see it simmer in his eyes for a while.
Rebel Ridge is unyielding and laden with bleak, murky visual overtones adding to the dark mood, although it is a bit cumbersome at times. With its underlying theme of racial politics and complex layers, it’s also very much a social drama. It’s a deeply human yet high-velocity actioner that explores corruption and morality in the context of bone-breaking action and ever-coiling suspense.
According to writer-director Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin, Hold the Dark), Rebel Ridge taps into our collective frustrations and, after a harrowing two hours, offers some catharsis. As we join him and the cast on the road to that cleansing, you get the answers to your biggest questions along the way.
“I am very interested in examining corrupt systems – how they are built and what people tell themselves to disavow or justify their own part in them,” Saulnier said. “For this movie, I wanted to tap into how the rest of us react to said systems, how infuriating they can be – from corrupt politicians down to the endless loop of a customer service call gone wrong.
“There’s action and violence for sure, but it was fun to explore weaponising words in a narrative sense, to make dialogue scenes play like high-stakes set pieces – to go more terrestrial and more grounded in order to play up an emotional charge that can resonate even more on-screen with two characters facing off verbally than when the pyrotechnics start exploding.”
Terry is tossed into a whirlwind of police corruption, small-town prejudice and all the twirls and turns of a deadly stratagem that triggers an edgy face-off.
While a quietly seething Pierre is remarkable as the restrained ex-Marine, Johnson has a little bit of fun and chews on some dialogue, but holds close to his ability to come off dead-serious, even reptilian. The ‘’raw dynamic’’ between these two adds to the striking team.
As Saulnier defines it: “The whole thrust of the movie is the charge between them, not only the potential for violence, but that restrained idea of sort of gentlemanly respect. Game recognises game.”
It also points to the collaborative synergy of an efficacious cast.
Rebel Ridge, directed by Jeremy Saulnier, is streaming on Netflix
