by Samuel Nichols, Contributing Writer
It wouldn’t be a weekend if Netflix wasn’t trying to get me to spend two hours of my precious time watching another movie. I might as well be plucking a jelly bean out of a bag. Might get green apple. Maybe it’ll be cinnamon. I could get lucky and pull a root beer. The point is, Netflix doesn’t stop for quality checks on their movies on the way out to the tube. So I consider myself lucky that the newest offering of Rebel Ridge is a root beer and not a rose hip. Was that analogy stupid enough for you?
Ex-Marine, Terry (Aaron Pierre), is biking into town with a sack of cash to post for his cousin Mike’s (C.J. LeBlanc) release. Just so happens he’s pulled into one of the most corrupt little towns you’d ever seen. He’s immediately accosted, stripped of his bail money, and nearly put in jail by officers Evan (the underrated David Denman) and Steve (Emory Cohen). Although Terry is not in legal trouble himself, he’s right between the crosshairs of Chief Sandy (Don Johnson). The mind games between these will drag in local Summer (AnnaSophia Robb) and expose just how deep the weeds run in this town. Will Terry save his cousin? Will he even make it out alive? Is everyone in this town as terrible as they appear?
Without giving away the entire conspiracy here, I have to commend the well-written script here. I was excited to see that there was more to this than just redneck cops. The film has a plot and a reason why the money is taken from Terry. It could have been very easy for the writers to just chop up Terry’s treatment to racism and Confederate pride. I’m not saying that isn’t in here, but there is a deeper reason why the town has secrets. Maybe providing protection for your loved ones and neighbors is not just as simple as pulling people over and taking fines. You gotta pay attention to this one.
Pierre gives a very measured performance that may get overlooked at first. He is calm and careful, all while trying to save his cousin and figure out what’s going on. Expressing his frustration and anger at this disgusting situation through small movements and tensing muscle shows his incredibly subtle skill. He is holding back so much and just trying to be the calm one against an enemy that is anything but. That enemy is played superbly by Johnson. He may not be completely out of control, as he is behind the conspiracy, but he is oozing evil bad guy. The condensation. The smarm. The intelligence. He’s puts up a good fight for Pierre.
Speaking of fighting, this movie is by no means a peer of John Wick or The Raid when hands are thrown, but it is better than some of the recent Netflix action shlock. The combat feels personal and intense, as it is often hand-to-hand. Tension fills each moment, as it feels like at any time the fires inside everyone will ignite into a massive explosion of some kind. Eventually it does happen and the moment is brutal.
Back to the cast, I know Robb was not gone from the silver or small screens before this, but I had not seen her in a project maybe since Soul Surfer. It was good to see her back. Summer is a complicated ally of Terry, and there’s more depth to her than one might expect at first. Similarly, Denman’s Evan appears a bad cop on Sandy’s payroll, but he is never quite sure of if he agrees with everything is being done in his town. I’m glad we got to see more of Roy post The Office.
Netflix has said in the past that they know they put out far too many movies a year and will be cutting back on new releases to focus on quality. I don’t know when exactly that is going to happen, as they have three movies coming out over the last three Fridays in September. These movies are Uglies (which looks like a crappy ripoff of Divergent, which was already crappy), His Three Daughters (a family drama with talented stars as the titular daughters), and Rez Ball (following about a Native America basketball team). One of these look interesting. One of these looks like Oscar bait. And one of them looks like trash. But as they take the shotgun approach to your releases, they are bound to push out some less-than-adequate stories. If their current volume shooting approach to movies keeps giving us movies like Rebel Ridge, where talented actors get something good to do over a good story, I’m all for it for now.
Rating: Liked It
Rebel Ridge is currently streaming on Netflix
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