Rebel Ridge review – Aaron Pierre delivers the… | Little White Lies

Rebel Ridge review – Aaron Pierre deliv­ers the goods and then some

06 Sep 2024 / Released: 06 Sep 2024

Young Black man sitting on kerb outside building, looking thoughtful
Young Black man sitting on kerb outside building, looking thoughtful
4

Anticipation.

Saulnier doing a revenge film, but the guy is actually good at it? Let’s go.

4

Enjoyment.

An engaging balance of of small town conspiracy and Aaron Pierre throwing cops around like ragdolls.

4

In Retrospect.

Patient, precise and very satisfying.

Jere­my Saulnier returns with a flinty, restrained crime-con­spir­a­cy thriller explor­ing small town police cor­rup­tion and the one guy who they should nev­er have messed with.

It’s fun­ny to com­pare Rebel Ridge to Jere­my Saulnier’s break­out film Blue Ruin, made over 10 years ago now – both are about vagrants get­ting (or try­ing to get) their pound of flesh. Though Rebel Ridge’s Ter­ry Rich­mond (a cap­ti­vat­ing, incen­di­ary Aaron Pierre) is much more capa­ble than Macon Blair’s char­ac­ter in that 2013 feature. 

Also, this one isn’t quite wall-to-wall action, it’s more sur­gi­cal in how it spaces out its bursts of vio­lence. Yet even when it does, it’s a far less bloody affair than some­thing like Blue Ruin or Green Room, or the bru­tal machine gun assault that fea­tures in 2018’s Hold the Dark. 

This film is one-part revenge, two parts con­spir­a­cy thriller, begin­ning with a legal” seizure of mon­ey that spi­rals out into a much more con­vo­lut­ed web of sys­temic crimes and how they’ve become cod­i­fied in Amer­i­can law. The dia­logue even touch­es on the ter­ri­fy­ing mil­i­tari­sa­tion of the police (“Civ­il unrest: it’s a growth indus­try.”) that enables and encour­ages the vio­lence – often racial vio­lence – they so often inflict. It also cov­ers the gall that comes from feel­ing per­se­cut­ed for being called out on it – the film’s sleazi­est char­ac­ter promi­nent­ly wears a Thin Blue Line’ patch.

Six foot tall for­mer marine who lives in the woods drifts into town, takes aim at local con­spir­a­cy while sham­ing bul­lies” sounds like a Jack Reach­er plot, but Saulnier’s writ­ing and Pierre’s per­for­mance are very far from the absur­di­ty of Reach­er and his din­ner-plate sized hands.

From the very begin­ning Rebel Ridge feels nat­ur­al and rather close to home in its depic­tion of bureau­cra­cy and even some­thing as small as pas­sive lan­guage being weaponised. Scored by a very loaded nee­dle-drop of Iron Maiden’s Num­ber of the Beast’, the incit­ing inci­dent sees a cop car delib­er­ate­ly knock Ter­ry off his bike, which is writ­ten off as a col­li­sion”, with a phoney crime made up so to take the large amount of cash on his person. 

After mul­ti­ple insults added to his injury, in his attempt to get his mon­ey back he’s dragged through an infu­ri­at­ing labyrinth of red tape on top of his encounter with the cops – who oper­ate like a gang in broad day­light. So just like in real life.

The red tape is a prob­lem here because Ter­ry is short on time. He’s on his way to post his cousin’s bail to res­cue him from the dan­gers of the state prison, and now the bail mon­ey has been locked away by the local PD. The actu­al mechan­ics of the laws involved here are beyond this film critic’s purview, but the absur­di­ty of it feels dehu­man­is­ing and real enough. 

Pierre’s per­for­mance is a huge part of that feel­ing. He’s utter­ly mag­net­ic through­out, his ini­tial help­less­ness and sym­pa­thet­ic des­per­a­tion lat­er con­trast­ed with how he cooly com­pos­es him­self with the com­mand of some­one who is very obvi­ous­ly not to be tri­fled with. His per­for­mance, com­bined with Saulnier’s patient build-up of delib­er­ate humil­i­a­tions and per­son­al slights, makes moments where Pierre deliv­ers lines like he’s got ice in his veins all the more satisfying. 

Zoom­ing out a lit­tle, Saulnier’s genre films have all applied their rather gnarly thrills to the sparse, wide-open land­scapes of Amer­i­can small towns, using their iso­la­tion to accen­tu­ate a rather uninvit­ing and often unfor­giv­ing atmos­phere. He proved just as adept with claus­tro­pho­bic spaces, such as in Green Room (anoth­er angry, lean film about fascists). 

Yet Rebel Ridge feels like the film all his pre­vi­ous ones were all build­ing to, evi­dence of the lessons tak­en on from Saulnier’s pre­vi­ous work: danc­ing between tense stand­offs in tight spaces; the ter­ror of being fol­lowed up the open road. He moves pur­pose­ful­ly between these con­fronta­tions with the film’s angry unspool­ing of a bro­ken polit­i­cal system. 

But this is the thing: as bro­ken as it may be, things are oper­at­ing as intend­ed. All of these legal­i­ties have been manip­u­lat­ed into ben­e­fit­ting enti­tled, jack­boot­ed fas­cists. The right­eous anger at this real­i­sa­tion hones Rebel Ridge into a sharp and very mem­o­rable thriller, hope­ful­ly to the point that it’s seen as wide­ly as possible.

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