Jeremy Saulnier’s Rebel Ridge is a race thriller that, up to a point, is as effective as they come. A Black man, Terry Richmond (Aaron Pierre), is racing down a Louisiana backroad on his bike, Iron Maiden’s “The Number of the Beast” blasting on his headphones. From there, he’s promptly rear-ended and thrown off his bike by a cop car in pursuit, held up at gunpoint, and thrown against the car by two officers. For some 15 minutes, we’re simply bearing witness to the kind of traffic stop that’s gotten so many Black people killed, and Saulnier twists the knife by expertly modulating the tension between the cops clearly looking for any reason to bust out the weaponry and Terry refusing to capitulate to his clear harassment.
Violence doesn’t ignite here, thanks to Terry unbelievably maintaining a cool head, but the traffic stop still ends with the cops confiscating the $30,000 in cash that he has in his backpack, on the suspicion that it’s drug money. In reality, it’s bail money for Terry’s cousin, Mike (C.J. LeBlanc), who’s about to be temporarily moved from a county jail to a local prison, where his life will be in serious danger if the members of his old gang find out that he’s there.
Rebel Ridge never rises to the panic-infused heights of its opening, but Saulnier is still able to maintain a baseline of oppressive tension as we watch Terry navigate the deep-seated corruption of a sundown town. And when AnnaSophia Robb’s Summer enters the mix, the narrative also focuses on the challenges faced by professional women like her who live in these kinds of places. There scenes constitute a resonant vision of kindred spirits brought together by a shared understanding, working and scheming together to make their way out of their marginalization.
Things step up a notch when a persistent Terry, trying to reclaim his money, has a confrontation with the town’s scumbag chief of police, Sandy Burnne (Don Johnson), who soon learns that he and the cops under his watch have messed with the wrong man, a man with a Particular Set of Skills™. The script’s refusal to give specifics works in Rebel Ridge’s favor, as does the strange but fascinating conceit of Terry being highly skilled at non-lethal de-escalatory combat. For a significant portion of the film’s runtime, the largely bloodless action manages to be fairly effective at cranking up the pressure of each confrontation that Terry has with the authorities.
Excitement isn’t necessarily the same as catharsis, though, and Rebel Ridge is stingy with the latter. There are obvious moments when it would have benefited from being less cagey, from calling out the town’s injustices by their names, especially across Terry’s interactions with the only Black officer (Zsane Jhe) on Sandy Burnne’s force. But aside from a breathless setup involving an attempt at planting a gun, the film’s second half turns cold and procedural. By the time it starts hitting a wall in its attempts to over-explain the ins and outs of the chief’s racket, Rebel Ridge you can’t help but wish that it pulsed with more hot-blooded vitality.
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