Rebel Ridge movie review: Aaron Pierre delivers star-making performance in ambitious Netflix thriller

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Zsané Jhé as Officer Jessica Sims and Aaron Pierre as Terry Richmond in Rebel Ridge.

Almost mockingly, they tell Terry that he’ll never see the cash again. But he needs it desperately. Terry had just sold his stake in the restaurant he’d been working at, and was on his way to the local courthouse to post bail for his cousin. The cousin, we’re told, was once an informer for the police — he isn’t going to survive a day in federal prison, and needs to be bailed out immediately. All of this happens in around 20 minutes, as Saulnier deftly lays out the premise, announces his politics, and gets you to root for his protagonist with an effortlessness that is all but missing in action cinema these days.

Gone are the days when Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger would play one-man-armies against foreign enemies in schlocky B-movies targeted at the lowest common denominator. The greatest villains, Rebel Ridge declares with a palpable anger, are no longer the Vietnamese or the Russians or even the Chinese; the greatest villains are born in America. And they’re usually hiding behind uniforms. Rebel Ridge is a post-police brutality movie, and that’s what makes it scarier. The racist cops don’t need to tase Terry or find excuses to choke him on the ground. The law is on their side.

His back against the wall and with time running out, Terry tries talking to the clerk at the courthouse, but to no avail. He also tries filing a complaint against the cops who stole his money, but discovers that everybody at the station is complicit. This is when he comes face to face with the chief, a wicked old man played by Don Johnson. The chief is about to make a run for sheriff soon, and thinks of himself as the king of the castle. Had Rebel Ridge been a dystopian picture, this character would’ve been a warlord of some sort. And Terry would’ve been Mad Max. It’s clear from minute one that he’s some kind of elite soldier, but he holds off on revealing this overtly until around the half-an-hour mark, when Saulnier unleashes a face-off sequence that is about as thrilling as anything you’re likely to see this year.

It’s a shame, then, that the movie can’t sustain this brilliance for the remainder of its two-hour run-time. Instead, it finds itself drawn to cliches — a single mom played by AnnaSophia Robb shows up to assist Terry in his takedown of the police; the cops mount a counter-attack, and the entire thing ends in a shootout. But this isn’t your cookie-cutter Netflix action movie; Saulnier has shown a singular command over his craft in the past, often combining biblical themes with gritty realism. Revenge is a theme that he has returned to often.

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Aaron Pierre as Terry Richmond and AnnaSophia Robb as Summer McBride in Rebel Ridge.

Saulnier’s movies are in a constant state of escalation; they’re tightly wound, marked by a tactful control over the tone. Rebel Ridge feels like an action movie, but Terry doesn’t exactly throw down until the end. Like Jack Reacher and Dalton from the Road House films, he’s a character straight out of a Western — a brooding man with a strict moral code; a samurai almost. And Pierre is pitch perfect in the role, balancing incredible anger with a zenlike calm that can perhaps be the difference between life and death for Black Americans. He’s going to voice the titular character in Mufasa: The Lion King in a few months, but this is his star-making turn.

Rebel Ridge
Director – Jeremy Saulnier
Cast – Aaron Pierre, AnnaSophia Robb, Don Johnson, Emory Cohen, David Denman, James Cromwell
Rating – 4/5