Rebel Ridge (2024)

September 5, 2024 10:54 AM

An ex-Marine grapples his way through a web of small-town corruption when an attempt to post bail for his cousin escalates into a violent standoff with the local police chief.

The Guardian: Rebel Ridge review – electrifying Netflix crime thriller is a knockout

AVClub: Jeremy Saulnier goes full Rambo with his elementally satisfying thriller Rebel Ridge

AP: Netflix’s tight, taut and tension-filled ‘Rebel Ridge’ is a first-rate drama

The Reveal: Saulnier’s latest often plays like First Blood crossbred with a Last Week Tonight with John Oliver segment.

posted by 1970s Antihero (22 comments total)

Whoops, jumped the gun on this one. It gets released on Netflix tomorrow.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 12:51 PM on September 5

Close enough. I will watch for it.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:59 PM on September 5

Saulnier’s latest often plays like First Blood crossbred with a Last Week Tonight with John Oliver segment.

Well, I'm sold.
posted by Literaryhero at 6:34 PM on September 5 [2 favorites]

I'll be trying to catch this this weekend. Had feels from the trailer like it's a cross of Jack Reacher with Walking Tall. Which is also to say, I'm hoping it's better than both of these.
posted by Atreides at 6:33 AM on September 6

I enjoyed it - not as ruthless and efficient as Green Room, but it carries itself with ease.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 5:52 PM on September 7

That was impressive. As near as I can remember, I don’t think Aaron Pierce ever shoots bullets at anyone, and he repeatedly disarms his opponents and throws the guns away, the way that hand-to-hand combat is taught (or at least, that’s how my friend who took krav maga described it).
posted by 1970s Antihero at 6:18 PM on September 7 [1 favorite]

What if we did Die Hard but we watched an episode of John Oliver about civil forfeiture and the cops are the bad guys, love it, it was amazing
posted by General Malaise at 9:37 PM on September 7 [2 favorites]

It was like Jack Reacher if Jack Reacher wasn't an insufferable smug prick.
posted by knapah at 6:43 AM on September 8 [3 favorites]

I guess Saulnier does better with everyday schmoes as heros instead of dour serious competent dudes who are a little too boring and cheesy. The dialogue is pretty bad, the whole story is often just so clunky. Tension is built up and vented in like unpleasant rhythms, it feels so forced.

I wanted to like this movie but I'd give it a D. I don't think it's all because of the troubled production.
posted by fleacircus at 4:36 PM on September 8 [1 favorite]

I loved this. Put it on at around 10:30 PM to have something in the background while I did a crossword puzzle. Should have turned it off at 11 because I had to go to sleep, but couldn't do it. Getting out of bed the next day was brutal, but no regrets.

Usually corrupt town thrillers have cops & officials getting into 100% blatantly illegal territory right away, and it's a pure power play. Oh, we found cocaine during the search, you're going to be shot "trying to escape," everyone will believe us.

Here (as was pointed out) most actions the police took were, taken individually, kind of within the realm of discretion. They can take your stuff and lock you up while they investigate stuff. The dramatic result of this is you had two semi-decent people in the department who were legitimately conflicted,

I'm not quite sure how he thought his first move towards violence could possibly have a happy ending, though. I know he was supposed to be desperate but seemed like an idiot ball play more meant to get an action scene in early.

It was like Jack Reacher if Jack Reacher wasn't an insufferable smug prick.

I liked the first season of Amazon's Reacher series, but this had as many good moments compressed into a couple hours.

Saw Jamelle Bouie was raving about this, also did the "Black Reacher" quip.
posted by mark k at 6:15 PM on September 9 [1 favorite]

I want to see this just for how hard comment section pissbabies are crying about it being woke.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:29 PM on September 9 [1 favorite]

In an interview, Saulnier said that the film tested well with conservatives:

I had a Q&A the other night, and someone asked, “Was there pushback from the community?” Absolutely not. Leesville, Louisiana, way out near Texas, and New Orleans — nothing but love and support. We had law enforcement and ex-military on set, and there’s detail in the vernacular, in the weapons handling, in the geography and logistics. This film tested extremely high with conservatives, actually. People want to get behind a protagonist, and it’s fun to have everybody get behind Terry Richmond.

posted by 1970s Antihero at 3:11 AM on September 10 [2 favorites]

That's cool. But for real, I am seeing a lot of meltdowns. I'm a big believer in "don't bring bad comments from elsewhere to MeFi" so I would have to ask you to take my word for it.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:48 AM on September 10

Makes perfect sense to me that it tested will with conservatives:

- People have been watching movies about corrupt cops forever - it even references the most famous one! "Corrupt police force" themes aren't new or shocking on their own
- The movie plays out like a good old fashion revenge western with an Ultimate Badass Lead - how can you not root for an ex-marine killing machine mechanically disarming and neutralizing a bunch of lesser-skilled bullies
- I feel like civil asset forfeiture - like drug legalization - is one of the few issues that libertarians and libertarian skewing conservatives will overlap with liberals on a civil liberties front. "Corrupt government stealin' my DAMN money" plotline has a fairly bipartisan feel to it
- I bet the movie rorscach test comes into play - left-leaning viewers will recognize it as being CRITICAL OF THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM (the aforementioned "John Oliver Segment"); right-leaning viewers might be like "this is about a one-off uniquely evil bad apple redneck police department sequestered away in the backwoods, not reflective of reality but sure I can buy in"
- Has extremely conservative sounding name - let's be real, "Rebel Ridge" feels like it's gonna have the confederate flag on the poster somewhere

I loved it! Obviously there's going to be racist losers online who are basically just mad that the lead is black, expressed in the form of "Grrr Netflix is Doing a Woke" but what else is new, I would otherwise recommend it to anyone regardless of their politics because at the end of the day it's really just a slow burning action thriller about a mega cool dude kicking a lot of ass. The race/class/criminal justice themes are a bonus.
posted by windbox at 8:48 AM on September 10 [3 favorites]

One thing I really admired was that Terry never killed anyone, which flies in the face of all the "the lone hero goes to small town and takes on corrupt law man" trope we usually see. I felt the film was shot pretty well and it was clear someone, the director or the cinematographer or someone really liked mirrors.

Another great aspect was how the film didn't make the initial encounter between Terry and the Police as 100% "these are the worse police in the world." We know they are the bad guys, but they are also somewhat professional in their engagement with Terry in so much as they aren't screaming or immediately threatening to harm him. If I would describe it, it made the interaction more realistic, more of a reflection of what you would expect if the police are about to abuse their power. It's going to be casual and dressed in the words and actions of how you would expect a police officer would speak and act in what would otherwise be a just interaction. It's the mundanity of evil.

I'm still mixed on whether we needed Summer's character or not, but going toward the idea that we did, it was because she allowed the story to evolve beyond just "the police seized my bail money and my cousin was killed because of it." It evolved it into a larger systemic criticism of police abuse and civil forfeiture. I do appreciate that they did not kill her character off.

Did not realize we were getting surprised James Cromwell! Don Johnson did a great job, and of course, Aaron Pierre brought both the intensity and size for the role.
posted by Atreides at 7:08 AM on September 12 [1 favorite]

Aaron Pierre was great, but the story was a lurching mess.
posted by maudlin at 9:05 PM on September 12 [3 favorites]

I'm with fleacircus on this one. It's amazing how clunky the movie was given a seriously compelling premise. Some observations:

- Why did he ride his bike to the courthouse? If he didn't have a car, couldn't he have gotten a lift from one of his friends?
- Don Johnson is starting to look a lot like Henry Winkler
- He really, really didn't need to say "Serpico!" when it turned out that Pam's ex-fiancee was the Good Guy, because obvioustown

It did have some good lines that, given the rest of the film, felt oddly out of place:

- "I was just going to say that that blows."
- "It smells like history down here!"
- "He fought in Korea." "Thank you for your service!" "He's Chinese. He fought for the other side."

I really liked Blue Ruin and Green Room so it was disappointing to not love this film.
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:27 PM on September 17 [1 favorite]

The script definitely could have used a once over, or two over or something. Like a lot of Netflix films that I've seen, it feels like the creators are given too much leeway to make their vision or whatever you want to call it. They often feel too long and not nearly as tight as they could be, and that in the end, undermines the quality.
posted by Atreides at 8:28 AM on September 18

Man, this just shows that cops are the final frontier for soft treatment in media. Any other demographic and there.will be cops who get killed, but you can't show that.. Cops get the soft gloves that even the military doesn't get. Oh this whole precinct is bad, oh no wait it's just the chief and the good cops who were just waiting for their chance escort everyone to the hospital. If only these bad apples could be reined in, all these good cops could be unleashed.
posted by Carillon at 11:09 PM on September 21 [1 favorite]

Not all cops, amirite?

Extremely disappointed the happy ending of this movie was facilitated by a police escort to the hospital from surprise good cops. Zero doubt this tested well with conservatives. It seemed designed to walk many fine lines to try and get approval from all sides without actually saying anything worth saying.
posted by Number Used Once at 10:44 AM on October 6 [1 favorite]

I've been thinking about the ending a lot (good? bad?) and I think it's feasible to say that it quite end with a "good cop" escort so much as the bad cops realized their chief was sunk (the video) and decided to cover for themselves by taking him out and dropping their beef with our hero. The African-American cop....makes it harder to divide this, but she wasn't the "good cop" who was leaking information, either. I think it's notable that Terry goes and retrieves the hard drive out of the cruiser to protect the video footage. He doesn't trust it being left alone outside with said "good" cops.
posted by Atreides at 8:51 AM on October 7 [1 favorite]

Aaron Pierre cast as John Stewart in HBO’s Green Lantern series.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 10:35 AM on October 9 [2 favorites]