written by Charles Elmore
REBEL RIDGE
Written & Directed by Jeremy Saulnier
Starring Aaron Pierre, AnnaSophia Robb, Don Johnson
**** Stars - Netflix Premiere - Streaming
Aaron Pierre engages in a manner of de-escalation in Jeremy Saulnier’s Rebel Ridge, 2024 netflix.
Watching the most-recent body-cam footage between Law Enforcement and a Person of Color, this time the agitated confrontation between a Miami motorcycle Police Officer and Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill, it’s hard not to feel a familiar pit in your stomach. A Black man, attempting to comply with law enforcement, faces a dangerous balancing act of self-preservation, knowing that his life might hinge on the confronting officer’s emotional state and mental fortitude. Even in 2024, it remains shocking to witness such continual aggression toward a person of color over something like a speeding incident, escalating quickly to physical force without provocation.
It is this racial tension between law enforcement and people of color in today’s America, especially in rural areas, sets the stage for Jeremy Saulnier’s Rebel Ridge. The film, Saulnier’s fifth, is a trou gripping action piece rooted in current social issues, with a standout performance by Aidan Pierre. He faces off against Don Johnson, whose Chief Sandy Burnne, a corrupt police chief, exudes a righteousness that skirts the line of caricature before settling into a simmering menace. With Rebel Ridge Saulnier brings the same kind of genre craftsmanship seen in films like Walking Tall, First Blood, Breaker Breaker into the relevant foreground of 2024.
The film delves deep into themes of xenophobia, racism, and systemic injustice. Pierre’s character, Mike, a U.S. Marine who - while never seeing combat - was trained in hand to hand combat and a panoply of deescalation techniques. It is this… special set of skills to quote Liams Nissans that the corrupt police chief, Sandy Thorpe (played by Johnson), underestimates when Mike is subjected to an unlawful seizure of his assets by a local cop. Assets that include over $30k in cash Mike is carrying to bail his cousin out of jail before he faces potential danger in prison. Under dubious municipal ordinances and misappropriated homeland security laws, the police rob Mike, who had just sold his vehicle to bail out his cousin. They assume the worst of him simply because he’s a Black man riding a bike and carrying cash in the Deep South.
With the aide of court clerk Summer played by AnnaSophia Robb, Mike realizes he is the victim of a corrupt police force desperate for revenue, that has resorted to seizing assets under onion-skin thin pretexts, flippantly using laws like the Patriot Act to justify their actions. But in Mike they’ve picked the wrong man to cross. Mike’s marine training and sense of justice lead to a calculated response using all manner of creative acronyms to as Mike often puts it “De-escelate” the situation, making Rebel Ridge more than a typical action movie. It's a cunning and visceral commentary on systemic abuse and racial injustice running rampant like wild Kudzu.
Jeremy Saulnier has proven his genre bona-fides. With the one-two punch of Blue Ruin and Green Room and while his follow ups - Hold The Dark and his stalled-out efforts with HBO’s True Detective series - didn’t quite capture the high intensity of those two films, Saulnier cemented himself as a filmmaker with a smart wit and exacting command of the thriller genre. In Rebel Ridge he crafts a taut, intense narrative that echoes the drive-in action films of the '70s and '80s. But unlike those films, Saulnier updates the genre with a modern lens, reflecting the Black Lives Matter movement and the recent killings of Black men at the hands of law enforcement. The film swaps the barren landscapes of classic Westerns for the dense, oppressive canopies of the Deep South, but the themes of lawlessness and corruption remain.
Rebel Ridge examines how municipal policing and asset forfeiture prey on vulnerable citizens, stripping them of their rights and dignity under the guise of justice all through the jocular intensity of a Stallone or Chuck Norris Carolco Pictures classic from the rental store shelves. Saulnier doesn't shy away from the harsh realities of communities across rural America, where entrenched poverty and corruption create an environment where injustice thrives while fully delivering on the promise of an intensely satisfying action film.
Charles Elmore