‘Rebel Ridge’ Review: Not Even Aaron Pierre’s Striking Turn Can Save Jeremy Saulnier’s Cliché-Ridden Netflix Thriller (original) (raw)
The latest action film from the director of 'Blue Ruin' and 'Green Room' pits an innocent ex-Marine against a corrupt sheriff in a small Louisiana town.
'Rebel Ridge' Allyson Riggs/Netflix
A man innocently biking down a country road is deliberately hit by a cop car at the start of Rebel Ridge. Later, law enforcement follow him again, shooting at his pickup truck. Eventually, he commandeers a police vehicle and they go after him one more time. By then, the film itself has been driving in circles. That’s too bad, because this story of corruption and conspiracy in a small Louisiana town might have passed as a taut if familiar action thriller — if it had actually been taut.
Instead, writer-director Jeremy Saulnier — who made the impressive revenge drama Blue Ruin (2013) and more recently the middling Alaska-set thriller Hold the Dark (2018) — leans here into the predictable tropes of the bad-cop genre. Also acting as his own editor, he does himself no favors by letting the movie run two hours and 11 minutes, exposing more and more clichés as it goes on and sags.
Rebel Ridge
The Bottom Line Watchable at best.
Release date: Friday, Sept. 6 (Netflix)
Cast: Aaron Pierre, Don Johnson, AnnaSophia Robb, David Denman, Emory Cohen, Steve Zissis, Zsané Jhé, Dana Lee, James Cromwell
Director-screenwriter: Jeremy Saulnier
2 hours 11 minutes
Aaron Pierre (The Underground Railroad) plays Terry, the ex-Marine being run down. For a brief stretch, it seems Rebel Ridge might be engaging with a socially relevant theme, as the white officers make false assumptions about the Black man they’ve been following. They refuse to believe that he has honestly obtained the $36,000 in cash he is carrying, or that he needs it to bail his cousin out of the local jail and help with his future. They confiscate the money and take him to the station in handcuffs. Pierre plays Terry with a flinty calm throughout, even when he is taking no nonsense and challenging the police. That intense resolve is one of the film’s better choices, and Pierre is, as always, a striking presence on screen. But Terry’s sternness comes to look static rather than strong, and the performance is not enough to withstand a flood of events too easy to see coming.
Any glimmer of social resonance soon fades as Terry is confronted by the town’s bullying sheriff, Sandy Burnne. Don Johnson plays the stereotype with a smirk and not a trace of irony, even when Burnne threatens Terry in dialogue that is ripe for satire: “If you enter this township again, it’ll go another way.” As Terry tries to get his bail money, guns are drawn and it turns out that he is, conveniently, also a martial arts expert. That seems meant to add a kinetic boost to the action scenes, which all remain perfunctory.
AnnaSophia Robb has little to play with in an unconvincing role as Summer, who works in an office at the town hall. She improbably decides to help Terry and to uncover the conspiracy that he has stumbled into. When you hear that she empathizes because she has had trouble of her own in the past, you can see that it’s only a matter of time before she is targeted, too. “I have a feeling tonight is going to turn dark,” she tells Terry en route to uncover evidence of the town’s corruption. “Isn’t that what nights do?” Terry says. James Cromwell avoids most of that bad dialogue because he has just a few small scenes as a judge.
The movie seems especially like a lost opportunity because it occupies some of the same ground as Blue Ruin, an effectively tense thriller set in a backwoods community. Rebel Ridge manages to hit the low bar of being competent and watchable. It does have a very appealing look, thanks to David Gallego’s cinematography, which captures a rich, ominous darkness at times and the lush light of the woods at others, along with some beautiful wide views of the orange-tinged horizon. Unfortunately, the film itself is as flat at that horizon line.
Full credits
Distributor: Netflix
Production company: Bonneville Pictures
Cast: Aaron Pierre, Don Johnson, AnnaSophia Robb, David Denman, Emory Cohen, Steve Zissis, Zsané Jhé, Dana Lee, James Cromwell
Director-screenwriter: Jeremy Saulnier
Producers: Anish Savjani, Neil Kopp, Vincent Savino, Jeremy Saulnier
Executive producers: Daniel Jason Heffner, Macon Blair, Louise Lovegrove
Director of photography: David Gallego
Production designers: John P. Goldsmith, Ryan Warren Smith
Costume designer: Amanda Ford
Editor: Jeremy Saulnier
Music: Brooke Blair, Will Blair
Casting: Francine Maisler, Molly Rose
2 hours 11 minutes
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