Rebel Ridge

In telling the story of a veteran seeking to bail his cousin out of a small-town Louisiana jail only to find himself battling the corrupt sheriff and his minions, “Rebel Ridge” feels like something fresh without being new. Writer/director Jeremy Saulnier is remixing familiar texts like “First Blood” and “Walking Tall” into a kind of anti-vigilante vigilante thriller in part by making the skin color of his protagonist black. That isn’t just a PC alteration, but a provocation, as if taking the story of Ahmad Aubrey and then working out wish fulfilling rage. That might suggest something heavy, or even polemic, and while there are layers of gravity, what truly stands out about “Rebel Ridge” is the verve of its storytelling. Indeed, there are two narrative about-faces in “Rebel Ridge” that are so nimbly built to, and so electrically turned, that when they happened, I literally laughed out loud. 

“First Blood” began with a long preamble to introduce John Rambo’s backstory whereas “Rebel Ridge” just begins. One minute Terry Richmond (Aaron Pierre) is riding his bike down the highway toward Shelby Springs, the next a couple cops are running him off the road, a striking evocation of being Black in America, where everything can suddenly wrong for no reason at all. The police officers cite a report of a stolen bike, mere phony pretense given that they never mention it again. And when they discover Terry is carrying $36,000 in cash, they ignore his claim that it’s bail money, citing suspicion of drug money instead, confiscating it and then daring Terry to challenge it in court, certain he never will. Terry’s challenge comes outside the halls of justice, and if that makes him sound like he’s gone rogue, it is notable how in dealing with Chief Sandy Burnne (Don Johnson), Terry remains intent on playing by the rules, and when that fails, playing by the chief’s rules. He even brings donuts! When both approaches fail, that’s when he takes matter into his own hands, brought home in the first story reversal, improbably and hilarious tied to a Wikipedia search, which is when the Shelby Springs PD finds out their asset forfeiture and physical intimidation game has finally run up against a worthy opponent.

Rather than exist as a lone wolf, Terry winds up with an unlikely partner in the form of Summer (AnnaSophia Robb) an assistant clerk at the courthouse who moonlights as a law student and proves the one person willing to help in a town otherwise under the thumb of Chief Burnne. She is not comic relief, exactly, but Robb is funny, nevertheless. Summer thanks Terry’s ex-restaurant boss Mr. Liu (Dana Lee) for his service in the Korean War until Terry points out he’s, like, you know, Chinese. “He fought on the other side,” explains Terry. “I’m glad we could all come together like this,” Summer says, a line Robb sort of sputters, not convinced of the observation herself. It’s a moment that manages to simultaneously skewer our ongoing fetish for mystical unity and also how the system in place leaves so many enemies in the same boat, forging that mystical unity from necessity rather than nobility. It epitomizes a wicked streak of black comedy coursing through “Rebel Ridge,” like one of Terry’s proposals being rejected by Burnne in a line so good I’m gonna quote it: “You could offer me eternal life, or a catfish sandwich and the answer would still be the same.”

Johnson makes for a fine villain. He is no larger-than-life malevolent force, just a self-impressed good ol’ boy, almost smart enough to know Terry is really in charge, but still too proud to admit it. His scheme, though, while not convoluted, necessarily, is still complicated, and reflects a narrative filled with so many switchbacks and explanations that you feel the whole two hours and eleven minutes a little too much while that overlong sensation reduces ostensibly crucial characters like Terry’s cousin and Summer’s young son to mere devices of the plot. Moment to moment, though, the filmmaking is frequently impeccable, the fluid camera encapsulating the calm, steely inner mind of Terry and how he reads and reacts to each tense situation, and Saulnier finds great success in tweaking the genre outline for his own mischievous purposes.

One of “Rebel Ridge’s” most barbed twists is Terry using some of the Shelby Springs PD’s cache of weaponry against them, essentially becoming John Matrix, the one-man wrecking crew of “Commando” (1985) but if he was one man wrecking crew up against a wannabe paramilitary outfit rather than a real one. That’s a cutting, even comical, twist, though Terry strives for non-lethal tactics, evoking another Schwarzenegger character, his Terminator of T2 (1991) when he graduates to being a mechanical humanitarian. Those are two seemingly incompatible ideas that manage to co-exist, not least because Pierre innately ties them together in his stout humanism, and which can feel either multi-dimensional or like a cop-out, depending, again, on your viewpoint, or maybe just your mood. It’s an exploitation picture set to simmer rather than boil, that wants to prod each side. One confrontation between Terry and a nefarious officer of the law near the end is bloody but stops just short of bloodthirsty, an incisive tack that just might make a certain sort of viewer, perhaps a liberal-minded viewer, perhaps a viewer like me, feel a little unsettled about how, for a moment there, they might want it to go further.