One of the things I love about this job is when a director surprises me. It reminds me that all is not certain and that directors contain multitudes.
Jeremy Saulnier is a director I have begrudgingly come to admire. His debut, Blue Ruin, bore me so much that I didn’t finish it. His follow-up Green Room was enjoyable, but considering what an easy mark I am for movies that exist to show nazis getting pounded, I found myself lukewarm on the movie as a whole. Yet, his latest venture, a ‘man with no name’ type of action movie, held me riveted.
Saulnier’s script follows a similar path as many of the Jack Reacher books by Lee Child. However, Aaron Pierre’s Terrance Richmond isn’t as beefy or Holmesian as Child’s Jack Reacher. He is, however, a fantastic, strong, silent type. Pierre, it should be noted, like Mike Colter, has the kind of magnetism that, in a more vibrant, interesting Hollywood, would be a movie star, and Rebel Ridge would be the movie that would turn him into one.
Sadly, we live in a timeline where it’s unceremoniously dumped onto the streaming service that birthed it. But Saulnier is a good enough filmmaker, and there’s hope it might shine through. If for no other reason than Rebel Ridge is lit well, and heavens to Murgatroyd properly lights its PoC.
Technical achievements aside, Saulnier tweaks the familiar story. Terrance may be an ex-marine, but he’s never seen combat. He trained soldiers to fight MMA style. He’s not a tank or master tactician. He’s merely a soldier who’s well-trained in certain aspects.
Likewise, Mark Harmon as Cheify Sandy Burnns, the sleazy sheriff who crosses Terrance’s path, doesn’t chew the scenery. Instead, his Chief Sandy is an evil man who, if you didn’t pay attention, would never really notice it. Harmon plays the Chief as a bad guy without ever dialing it up to eleven, and it’s all the more chilling and fascinating for it.
Even the defense attorney with the heart of gold, Summer McBride (AnnaSophia Robb), has shades of grey to her. She’s not the love interest or the damsel in distress, though there are times when Robb and Pierre are led to believe they could be a couple, and in the end, she needs rescuing. However, Robb’s Summer does not exist purely for those outcomes. Like Terrence, she is flawed. A recovering addict, she is trying to rebuild her life to get her daughter back.
But it’s how Saulnier lets it all play out that’s so damn riveting. Rebel Ridge leaves so much unsaid. It’s not a film made for the inattentive viewer. The racism that percolates throughout Saulnier’s script is never given a name. But it’s there. The way Chief Sandy tells Terrance, he stops wanting to help him when Terrance stops calling him Sir.
The way two sheriff officers, Marston (David Denman) and Lann (Emory Cohen), give off a sinister vibe as they hassle him after running him off the road. Pierre’s Terrance says it all on his face; he knows what this is. The internal struggle of forcing himself to nod and say ‘yes, sir’ is at odds with who he is. Sualiner understands the difference between saying the phrase respectfully and when you feel it’s expected.
Sualiner’s script, like all good strangers walking into town stories, starts simple but gradually begins to reveal a complicated web of lies and deceit. But since Terrence isn’t a super sleuth, he needs Robb’s Summer to help him unravel the mystery. The two sizzle together onscreen but with merely sexual tension, although there is that. However, their relationship is undefined, and they don’t sleep together. A connection between them hints that they might, at the very least, become the best of friends. In an era of Hollywood where people feel thrown together because of an algorithm, seeing two people click this well is damn near miraculous.
If that weren’t enough, James Cromwell would be in a thankless role, bringing his resonant voice to a man exhausted by local politics. I’ve missed films that bring in actors like Cromwell for one scene in the back half.
Rebel Ridge should have been released in theaters. Saulnier and Gallego’s camera evokes the haunting charm of the Southern countryside. The way a small town can feel claustrophobic while also being the loneliest place in the world.
The scene in which the Sheriffs have to Google an acronym on Terrence’s file but then have to restart the Wi-Fi is both amusing and accurate. It is a sly nod and reworking of the requisite scene where the bad guys realize they’ve messed with the wrong hombre.
The vibes of Rebel Ridge are as crucial as the charisma threatening to erupt from its frames. Saulnier’s Rebel Ridge feels almost contemplative compared to many action movies today. It is unquestionably an action movie but doesn’t have many action beats. Instead, it allows Pierre, Rob, and Harmon to provide the explosions.
Saulnier imbues a sense of fatalism in Rebel Ridge. David Gallego’s camera camera is almost contemplative as the knot of a plot is untied. People will cite Rambo as an obvious forefather, but I think Burt Reynolds movies like White Lightning and Gator fit the bill. Saulnier and Gallego seem to be pulling from the same sense of Southern malaise, only with Pierre’s Black visage adding a tint of commentary.
For amid all the slick tete-for-states and the sweet action, there’s a whisper of something more. The fuel of Rebel Ridge is the notion that you can’t reform something as corrupt as police officers- or even our justice system. That a few good guys cannot counterbalance the bad ones who will abuse authority.
It’s not so much nihilism as it is a kind of understanding that the root cause of these issues is inherent in the system itself. (Not to mention a healthy fury at the abuse of civil forfeiture that so many police departments have taken advantage of.)
Or at least until the film’s final reel in which Saulnier feels compelled to have Terrence and Summer put their fate in the hands of the system they know to be so easily corrupt. Perhaps it’s Saulnier’s way of voicing the all too American cry of ‘What else can we do?’ We know it’s terrible but are powerless to do anything to change or stop it. For anything that would require a will, we seem unable to muster.
As a result, the ending, while satisfying, feels anticlimactic. Perhaps that’s the point, though, asking us what a satisfactory ending would look like. Because it does work, it doesn’t land the same punch as the rest of the movie.
Rebel Ridge is a methodical slow-burn of a movie. Saulnier finds little ways of taking a story as old as the Grampian hills and finding new life in the crevices. Movies with ‘man with no name’ plots are deceptively tricky to pull off. These stories follow the same pattern: a stranger walks into town and soon finds himself caught in a web of corruption and violence. They sound easy on paper, but when you see enough of them, you appreciate movies like Rebel Ridge.
Images courtesy of Netflix
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