REVIEW: ‘Rebel Ridge’ Takes Aim At The Police

Jeremy Saulnier knows how to lock into a mood. That much is clear from the writer-director’s previous two films, Blue Ruin and Green Room, and his episodes of the third season of True Detective. However, bubbling under the surface of his films’ visceral thrills has been a sense of social unrest. Whereas Green Room and Hold the Dark probed the feeble nature of being bound together by hatred and the kinds of psychopathic tendencies the military can nurture, respectively, Saulnier’s latest for Netflix – Rebel Ridge – takes aim at police corruption. Righteously angry, Rebel Ridge is a pointed indictment of the United States policing system that is coincidentally a near-perfect thriller.

Rebel Ridge begins on a white-knuckle note. U.S. Marine Corps veteran Terry Richmond (Aaron Pierre) is riding his bike on the sparse roads of Shelby Springs. His backpack contains all the cash Terry has, meant to bail out his cousin in jail for a marijuana possession charge. Blasting Iron Maiden in his earbuds, Terry can’t hear the police cruiser behind him, who knock him off the road and accuse him of refusing to pull over before confiscating his money. Terry attempts to go through the legal system to get back what’s rightfully his, aided by county clerk Summer McBride (AnnaSophia Robb), but the shady police Chief Sandy Burnne (Don Johnson) is standing in his way.

Saulnier’s major masterstroke in Rebel Ridge is his casting of up-and-comer Aaron Pierre. In his role as Terry Richmond, Pierre always holds himself up with dignity. A man of honor, he’s compliant, polite, and articulate, even when frustrated. Pierre plays Terry not as a man who snaps but as someone trying to right a wrong by calculating a plan to set things right. Not seeking revenge but wanting to get even. As Terry, Pierre pulls off the difficult feat of never losing composure, constantly improvising to make well-considered moves to take his aggressors to task.

Rebel Ridge has an astute view of the United States police, rarely seen in modern media. This isn’t a movie where cops go shouting slurs or beating suspects with impunity because, in the town of Shelby Springs, a recent controversy has left the police with what they perceive as little weapons of retribution. So the officers who detain Terry (David Denman and Emory Cohen) instead spit out microaggressions and tie up Terry’s money in more red tape than he can possibly cut his way out of.

Don Johnson’s character is the epitome of what modern police are, putting on the veneer of civil, by-the-book work. At the same time, their language barely masks that they’re simply using more agreeable verbiage to assert their dominance over the people they’re supposed to be protecting.

Rebel Ridge‘s potent criticism makes it even more powerful in how it gets to the root of the problem in a distinctly cinematic fashion. As Terry and Summer look deeper into what’s going on with the Shelby Springs police department, what they uncover becomes more petty, greed-motivated, and, essentially, wide-scale means of the department covering up their crimes.

Jeremy Saulnier posits that the true evil of the Shelby Springs police department, and others like it, is a delusional sense of self-preservation, an outright refusal of accountability or any substantial change. So much of Rebel Ridge involves Terry and Summer trying to get to the bottom of things while, in conjunction, the police are trying to cover their tracks as efficiently as possible. Bolstered by a droning, heart-rate accelerating score by Brooke Blair and Will Blair, it’s clear that the two factions are destined to collide violently.

Of course, they do. And when it happens, cinematographer David Gallego has a sharp eye for the geography of an action sequence that makes it clear what’s happening at all times. Even as the camerawork keeps a naturalistic, handheld quality, what’s at stake is always clear, which means we’re always on the edge of our seats for what will happen next. It’s impressive, then, that in the background of the final standoff- we’re starting to notice that some of the cops are uncomfortable with what’s going on. The self-preservation is starting to fail; the forces of oppression are gaining self-awareness about their situation.

Rebel Ridge comes out at a critical moment of reckoning in our society regarding law enforcement. Saulnier invites the viewer to question our current systems of power through a semi-allegorical tale of a good man who’s been put through the wringer by an archaic, selfish mode of “protection.” That it manages to be a compelling drama on its own would almost feel like an afterthought if it didn’t feel so propulsive.

Rebel Ridge is a top-tier Netflix original and another notch in a highly under-discussed director’s belt that deserves to be included in any conversation about some of the best films of 2024.

Rebel Ridge streams on Netflix on September 4, 2024.