Rebel Ridge (2024)

Rewatched 9/10/24 (Netflix)

Some of us waited 4+ years, all but salivating for this next Saulnier spectacle…and luckily it’s well worth the wait. With a winning premise, crisp dialogue, a coming out party in tow for Aaron Pierre, and classically tense Saulnier minute-to-minute, Rebel Ridge all but forces itself onto the Netflix Top 10 without a warrant. It’s plenty good enough to get away with that—in fact, one wishes it had been forced into theaters.

Despite a bevy of elite character actors stacked against him, all of whom bringing their A-games, newcomer Aaron Pierre announces no-nonsense stardom with the vicious snapping of various bones and the steely resolve of a guy who’s been there before. It’s a confident, wholly believable performance that oozes cool and makes you wonder just how similar to his character Pierre really is. And in a story with this many screen-stealing bad guys (shout out to Emory Cohen and David Denman, who give two of the most memorable 15-minute supporting performances of the year), it’s no easy feat to run the show. Writer/director Jeremy Saulnier finds a solid balance between his underdog hero and pitch-perfect villains, despite the runtime threatening to overstay its welcome. Even as Netflix becomes the biggest villain of all in trying to bury Rebel Ridge on streaming, stalwarts of the genre should quickly see and claim the arrival of Pierre and the return of Saulnier as causes for celebration. It smacks you right in the face—pretty hard to miss.

Aaron Pierre’s Terry Richmond, a Military Vet in town to bail his cousin out of jail, quickly finds himself pitted against Don Johnson’s Police Chief Sandy Byrnne, who of course reveals there’s a lot more at stake in their town than one recently-arrested marijuana holder. Saulnier writes a captivating little part for the always welcome Johnson, allowing the septuagenarian to chew as much screen as he does long cut. Ridge is at its best when Johnson and Pierre directly square off. Stagey, combative dialogue, cat-and-mouse gunplay, and the most effective use of Wikipedia in a movie ever. When the script slows down and loses Chief Byrnne for a while, it loses a bit of the white-knuckled showmanship that it so confidently brandishes in its best scenes. But luckily it has enough going for it to get by and then some.

There’s more than a few Elmore Leonard bones in this story’s skeleton, what with corrupt, shit-eating-grin cops, small towns, and dirty judges serving as main characters and trading rat-a-tat dialogue that makes it all feel more lived in than most crime thrillers. But it’s the melding of that formula with martial arts, tasers, and hardcore tactical smoke guns that propels Rebel Ridge up to the high bars set by its obvious influences. Aaron Pierre and Jeremy Saulnier do highly credible collaboration with the physicality and weaponry of it all to give the film that extra-sharp edge that acts as Saulnier’s calling card and a hardcore digestif to the talky script. It’s a joy to watch, right on the very edge of your seat.

One of the most fascinating things about Rebel Ridge is that, despite its seemingly action-cartoon title and what we know about this filmmaker’s notorious bloodlust, it’s a quiet, pensive movie. Under the surface, that may not come as a surprise to the Saulnier allegiant, who may very well recognize here his characters’ trademark confrontational incompetence and almost meditative pre-battle speeches, despite Ridge actually being a movie (SPOILER) without much of a body count.

My favorite of the movie’s dialogue passages involves its main character revealing pre-confrontation that his past is actually much more peaceful than one would expect—it really acts as this very cooly un-macho kicker to complete Terry’s turn into the underdog of the year and reinforces a key belief of every anti-establishment do-gooder in that experience is not everything. So that was a bit coded to me but I’d say it should be exciting for anyone even without the subtext striking a chord. There’s jusy something different and exciting about it.

And one would be remiss not to mention the clearly well-researched police and military details of the film. Some of these secondary details end up playing extremely gripping roles in the story that I didn’t notice to their full extent until a second viewing. Jeremy Saulnier cited Michael Clayton as an influence and one can certainly see B-grade Gilroy-isms and unexpected plot twists throughout Rebel Ridge, most for better. A few for worse. A couple of twists and turns feel a bit convoluted and perhaps lacking in fully-realized motivation/energy, but the central conflict is so engagingly presented that it’s a pretty great feeling when you realize that the cop cars have a failsafe or when you listen to Pierre deliver his chilling PACE acronym. Those adrenaline-fueled, research-boosted moments quite often make up for any of the unnecessary fluff that other plot beats present.

Without getting too deep into spoilers, Rebel Ridge culminates with some of the most riveting 20 or so minutes of the year in film thus far. Watching Terry disassemble weapons, traverse smoke grenade explosions, and finally choke slam cops is up there with the sandworm ride from Dune Part Two and the White House assault from Civil War as the high points of set piece filmmaking for 2024, and I certainly look forward to rewatching this hard-hitting trilogy of sorts. All three mentioned sequences use such a thrumming yet delicate precision of sound and choreography…the perfect recipe for goosebumps and a big smile. Rebel Ridge certainly put a smile on my face and will continue to as I patiently wait for Saulnier’s next kickass feature.

8.5/10