A movie like Rebel Ridge has all the makings of a very good movie that could’ve been an incredibly awesome movie. It’s the type of movie that could’ve benefitted from another set of eyes on it in post-production. Jeremy Saulnier is credited as the writer and director…as well as the editor.
And at 131 minutes, you might be finding yourself wondering what’s going to happen next only to realize it’s a little of the same stuff you’ve already seen. I enjoyed it and Saulnier takes a different approach to the current action thriller in the wake of the John Wick movies and its distant cousin Nobody. Aaron Pierre gives a star-making performance as Marine veteran Terry Richmond who knows what to say and how to say it.
Terry is cycling through Louisiana to bail out his cousin when he’s stopped and detained by police of the fictional town of Shelby Springs. The two cops seemed to be out of Central Casting as they are overweight and both have beards and the early receding hair lines of male-pattern baldness. The only thing missing are sunglasses with mirrors on them. Officer Evan Marston (David Denham) says he’s been following Terry for two miles. This might be an exaggeration but he fits the description of a suspect.
Terry is used to this harassment and plays it cool as the younger, more reckless Officer Steve Lann (Emory Cohen) shows up. They discover that Terry has $36,000 in cash in a bag from a Chinese restaurant. Terry explains that $10,000 is to bail out his cousin and the rest is to purchase a pick-up truck. They say they can let him off with a warning but they’re going to have to take the money as part of a civil forfeiture, thinking it might be part of a drug deal. Terry objects but realizes he can go into town to settle the matter.
Unfortunately, people at the Shelby Springs City Hall aren’t much help, except for a clerk, Summer McBride (AnnaSophia Robb), who explains to him the legal limbo of seizure and forfeiture. The police department and city officials will file a civil forfeiture against the money and the money alone. This will make it basically impossible for Terry to get the money back. And he can’t get his cousin, Mike Simmons (C.J. LeBlanc), out of the city jail. There’s some mention that Mike, a petty drug dealer, knows some information about a bigger drug lord or something. But it’s never really touched on.
And that becomes a problem with the movie. So much is implied but it never goes through with it. I have a feeling this movie was written on the fly mostly due to lack of funding. Reportedly John Boyega was originally supposed to be playing Terry but had to drop out citing “family issues.” This led to Saulnier, who’s made Blue Ruin and Green Room, to rewrite it. But Blue Ruin was a tighter 90-minute thriller.
Saulnier does know how to write fascinating characters and there is a perfect villain in Sandy Burne (Don Johnson), chief of the police. He was once an honest law officer but budgets have gotten tighter and they have used the forfeitures to help fund their department. And there are some other characters in the movie who have their own twists and turns. You expect one person to be more of a help and they’re not. But suddenly, someone you think is going to be bad comes to Terry’s aid. I don’t know if certain scenes couldn’t be reshot so they scrambled to make due with what they already had, but it does seem off.
I will give Saulnier credit for not reducing the movie into too-much of a shoot-em up action thriller. This is the type of movie where you can see where every gunfire shot goes. There’s also a nice semantics discourse about how non-lethal weapons should really be called “less lethal” for legal reasons. Yet things get repetitive.
Also, Saulnier seems to do a common problem most filmmakers do when it comes to law enforcement. Shelby Springs is supposed to be a small municipality but it seems to have one of those police forces where the station is only open during daytime. Also, it’s way out in the boondocks but Shelby Springs doesn’t look to be a big city, just a standard small-town. This would make it having a few square miles area of jurisdiction. It’s easy to dismiss Marston’s comment about going after Terry for two miles as hyperbole. But there are many scenes set in the country where the police are patrolling where they wouldn’t really have any jurisdiction.
These are subtle issues I have but it does make sense why they don’t radio for assistance from the sheriff’s office or state police. Robb does what she can with the role but I feel it was poorly written. Why does she have to be recovering from a drug addiction while stuck in a custody issue? It’s a tired, use cliched trope. I wish we could’ve seen more by James Cromwell who appears in one scene as a corrupt judge who’s in on the shady deals with the police department.
If anything else, this movie should get the public talking more about the backdoor corruption that civil forfeiture is really nothing more than theft with a legal protection. Cash and property are seized all the time for “illegal” activities suspected. Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t. But it shows the hypocrisy of laws are really in place to punish anyone the law officers and judges see fit. You can’t have too much money in cash or even in your checking account at one time or it can be seized. You can’t really have a firearm on your possession, even in open carry Red states, if the powers that be don’t want you to have it.
Like I said, Rebel Ridge is a very good movie. I could watch it again. It just doesn’t give off the same enthusiasm of wanting to watch a movie again shortly after finishing it. I would like to see Pierre in some other movies with a bigger caliber. He does have a good presence on screen. And hopefully this movie opens a lot of doors for him.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 