For a good number of Americans, it is almost second nature to watch movies in which two people are waging a war for a big burlap sack full of money. The money however is never portrayed to be purely for its value. It has the connotation of a better life, an opportunity to alter one’s social standing, and at times it is even a means to something that was always out of reach. One of those films is Jeremy Saulnier’s new film Rebel Ridge. There is no cynicism in this social message even though judging by its end that is what it gets projected as, but there is a pessimistic criticism on the current status of social welfare. However, this is one hell of a good show.
Rebel Ridge plots about ex-US Marine Terry Richmond (Aaron Pierre), who’s on his way to bail his cousin out for the weirdest of arrests, only to be chased by a cop car, and sensibly himself gets mugged of the 36 000$ he was carrying, under the misguided understanding of ‘legal asset forfeiture’ or something like. After Richmond tries reporting the crime, he runs up against the villain of the piece: police chief Sandy Burnne, (the always awesome Don Johnson), setting off a quite outrageous and comically as well as violently entertaining encounter between the two.
You know what they say, right? If you don’t like what I am about to talk about then better catch the K loose and that’s exactly what I am not going to do with you guys because you see as long as I am concerned the Rebel Ridge does not do any of that as you can imagine. It’s not a social movie. It’s a social fantasy of sorts where people in power get to breakdown and reinvent an order when two of the institutions tackle each other: The police and the army. The most romantic of the two is always going to be the latter since it’s unbothered with policing the people from its own country. The narrative aligns itself to explain American patriotism quite well.
The events between Terry and Chief Burnne together describe the failure of conflict resolution as you can see. As the film progresses, it becomes apparent that none of them are willing to make any compromises whether it be moral or financial. That lack of willingness drives them into a duel where Burnne displays some of his born tactical skills and Terry displays his on sport prowess. Much of the film however does concentrate on two men staring into each other’s eyes waiting for the other one to relent on the demands, and both bracing for a confrontation.
So yeah, this is more of a modern western than it is a say, The Wire with all its Dickensianism. I really do think that it ever purports to be anything else. Just that, a typical Jeremy Saulnier’s movie, In Rebel Ridge there is a willingness to go where other action movies do not which undermines its message and I’m not so certain that the undercurrent of systemic oppression and ethnic animosity really helps the film as it’s half in real world and half in Sam Peckinpah’s world. The action scenes alone are worth the two hours.
If you really want to watch a man take an entire squad of Armed professionals only with smoke grenades, go watch Rebel Ridge.
What the fuck is wrong then? Why am I not head over heels AGAIN for a Jeremy Sauliner Movie? I dont know. The or the moral outsider washes an entire town full of corrupt cops and rescues the damaged girl cliche seems to me as I’ve said, the kind of annotation that twelve years old me would have devised out of a karate movie. It is very simplistic. Grownups are not some cartoon drawing shaped silhouettes with rounded holes inside them. They have cuts and rough edges which are absent in the main and antagonistic characters of Rebel Ridge. These are video clips of good and evil.
I am a big Jeremy Sauliner guy but this previous screenplay he wrote was already in a more softened and more burdensome parts territories. I mean where is the soldier that stabbed his own platoon Fox? Where is the shattered man that longs for genocide? The social climate has drastically altered in the past few years and probably, it is far harder now to produce a film that has dark storylines or complicated ethics, but this is not the solution to the problem. It’s true that Rebel Ridge works but it does not equal to more than the parts of the film.
I’m being overly critical here, but Rebel Ridge is okay, it’s just fine. Generally, the execution is spectacular, just like in any other of Reid’s movies, and it is cheap to create the sensation that you’re uncomfortable with the movie. Where I wasn’t pleased, however, was with the absence of cuts politically since Jeremy Saulnier is not the kind of a director who polarises the issues he films. He likes capturing men fighting at the dismantled time continuum. Well, there is something in Rebel Ridge, but not that much. There are reasons for Terry Richmond to not feel it is necessary to build a world.
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