Rebel Ridge (Jeremy Saulnier, 2024)

[yoloswegmaster]

Jeremy Saulnier will direct John Boyega in the feature Rebel Ridge for Netflix

Haven't heard much noise about this around here but it's dropping in 2 days on Netflix (without John Boyega, who was replaced by Aaron Pierre) and is getting very positive reviews, which makes it all the more bizarre that Netflix decided to not sent this to any of fall festivals and is opting to not do a theatrical release.

[Mr Sausage]

I'm cautiously excited for it. I thought his last, Hold the Dark, was so elliptical as to be incomplete. I wasn't able to understand what was happening on a basic plot level until I read a synopsis of the book it was adapted from. And even then, a lot of it is unaccountable. But I really liked Blue Ruin and especially Green Room. Saulnier has a talent for grim, violent b-movies.

[yoloswegmaster]

I'm cautiously excited for it. I thought his last, Hold the Dark, was so elliptical as to be incomplete. I wasn't able to understand what was happening on a basic plot level until I read a synopsis of the book it was adapted from. And even then, a lot of it is unaccountable. But I really liked Blue Ruin and especially Green Room. Saulnier has a talent for grim, violent b-movies .

I also think that Hold the Dark is his weakest film yet but it was good for him to go out and try something different and shift away from the films prior that were admittedly simplistic (not meant to be a complaint, as I really love Blue Ruin and Green Room) and pigeonhole himself. It's been said that this new film is a lot more straightforward and akin to something like First Blood, though less violent and gruesome.

[knives]

Worse than Murder Party?

[yoloswegmaster]

Never actually seen Murder Party. I totally forgot that it existed.

[Mr Sausage]

Jeremy Saulnier will direct John Boyega in the feature Rebel Ridge for Netflix

Haven't heard much noise about this around here but it's dropping in 2 days on Netflix (without John Boyega, who was replaced by Aaron Pierre) and is getting very positive reviews, which makes it all the more bizarre that Netflix decided to not sent this to any of fall festivals and is opting to not do a theatrical release.

So I just said Saulnier is great at violence, but he's actively avoiding that here, like he set himself the challenge of making a tense, exciting action movie--one riffing on First Blood no less--in which his badass ex-military lead tries not to kill anyone and often fights in order not to inflict injury. This one features none of the ultraviolence that Saulnier is known for, yet it has all his other strengths. It's a solid, exciting thriller. I enjoyed it a lot. Bit sad Netflix just dumped it onto their platform without much fanfare (and the terrible title doesn't help--it either sounds like a war film or a part of Zack Snyder's Netflix sci-fi series). Hope it finds some viewers.

[Finch]

I'm intrigued. Blue Ruin was wonderful, Green Room was fine. I passed on Hold the Dark. Maybe Rebel Ridge will get a Shout 4K in a year or two.

Also, First Blood being gruesome? I remember the film being very different in tone to the sequels and very restrained.

[Mr Sausage]

First Blood is nowhere near as violent as the sequels, not even close, but it does have cops being skewered in the legs by punji stick traps, a guy falling to a bloody death on some rocks, and a Vietnam flashback where Stallone is being carved up in gruesome detail. It has its share of violence. Rebel Ridge is even less violent than First Blood.

[Finch]

Rebel Ridge was wonderful. The tensest film I've seen this year so far. I need to see it a second time to decide if it eclipses Blue Ruin but I feel it's up there at least. The scene where Aaron Pierre returns to the police station and Don Johnson meets him in the open and they exchange words and Johnson realises that he's met a worthy foe was a nailbiter and what makes the film so great is that there's a couple more scattered throughout. By right, this should have gotten a theatrical release and I hope someone out there, Shout, Criterion, Vinegar Syndrome, anybody, recognises the film as worthy of a Blu-Ray, perhaps even a 4K. This was fucking good.

[Maladroit Aggregator]

I thought Rebel Ridge was laughably dumb. Minus the explicit and creative violence and novel milieu of something like Green Room, all we're left with is a reductive, desiccated scrim of Jack Reacher-meets-Queen & Slim, with all of the former's shortcomings and none of the latter's merits.

Like Reacher, our stoic protagonist is eye-rollingly adept at hand to hand combat, tactical thinking, blah blah blah, and rolls into a hick town where - whadya know? - opportunities arise to utilize these skills to defend himself from unjust harassments and uncover a nasty conspiracy of Good Old Boys(TM). Reacher (in all its forms) is wish-fulfillment for Viagra-addled Boomers perplexed and frustrated at the complexity of the real world, and here Saulnier similarly allows no ambiguity to soften the edges of his agenda and grade school roleplaying. Both Green Room, with its Nazi Bad Guys(TM) and this flick pit put upon groups (punk rockers, young black men) against a clear enemies, but no amount of fixing accounting errors (which is really what this film is about, for its villains at least: dollars) enrich the simplistic moral high ground the filmmakers think they're taking.

Absent here is the thrilling mythmaking of Queen & Slim, whose equally wronged characters traverse from the worst first date ever to legendary annihilation, replaced instead with rote, uncharismatic acting and the driest directorial style since... well, name any TV director. Top it off with an audience pandering, pieces-fall-into-place, Good Guys Win(TM) ending so saturated with cliché it sinks like a wet sponge. Give me instead the gray and despairing (but also hilarious) work of Craig Zahler, whose take on race and propriety is more threatening but also more nuanced than Saulnier (or just about anyone else working) and who does more, more memorably, with Don Johnson in much less screen time.

One positive is the subtraction of the eternally wretched John Boyega as our lead. The only thing that would have made this film even more awful is Boyega's simpering, self-pitying, crybaby, petulant presence. Aaron Pierre at least maintains some dignity - though he strains at it - which is a quality Boyega lacks entirely. Saulnier seems to gravitate towards this character type; in Blue Ruin, Macon Blair offers one of the worst and most repellant performances of the 21st Century (no small achievement) as a cow-eyed, frog-faced, man-child In Over His Head(TM). Hopefully Saulnier mixes things up next time, grows up a little, writes some characters who aren't stuck in G.I. Joe blister packs, or complete blubbering punchable wrecks. You know, real human beings.

[therewillbeblus]

I thought this was fine, but not exceptional. The hardcore ACAB didacticism was a bit irritating, particularly when looping in the unnecessary side plot of AnnaSophia Robb's situation, even if I support its general politics. The action scenes and tense moments were quite good, but the film is overly long and takes too many languorous detours that feel completely at-odds with its economic strengths. Something lean like Saulnier's first two efforts would've been more welcome. Still, a solid little thriller and worthwhile rainy-day watch. Aaron Pierre is captivating and his confident commitment to deceptively-simplistic stoicism carries the film during moments that might've fallen flat with a different lead.

[Mr Sausage]

Robb's situation isn't unnecessary. Without it, there are no stakes in the second half, and no emotional investment given how internalized Aaron Pierre's character is.

I found this a lot less didactic than you. There are no speeches or much analytical content. Much of the exposition is no different than any other conspiracy movie.

[therewillbeblus]

You're right, it's necessary - I guess there was just too much exposition for me, which is what I found unnecessary and rather underwhelming. I should've chosen my words better.

[Finch]

I had no issues with the 2 hour running time either.

[mfunk9786]

Loved this film, and have watched it twice with a third only being held back by the righteous indignation it boils up inside of me. I think it's Saulnier's strongest overall effort considering I can't give him all the credit (or even much of it, apparently) for how well True Detective Season 3 turned out. There aren't enough good revenge films made now without a whole lot of Tarantino-aping pastiche (don't get me started on that piece of shit Strange Darling, just let me continue to forget I saw it), and this is a straightforward and intense revenge picture that occasionally flirts with being on the level of something like Rolling Thunder. Aaron Pierre is great, certainly my leader in the clubhouse for male performance of 2024 as of now. Considerable upgrade from Green Room and Hold the Dark, so if you'd sort of felt like Saulnier lost his edge like I did, this would be a good time to jump back in.

[untitled]

Nah. (Get it?)

When you're too damn deadly to go to war, the Marines make you stateside combatives instructor.

I kept pausing the TV to see how much time was left. Too much time left. Eyerollingly bad. I'm embarrassed I sat through it all. I keep telling myself "There is no shame in quitting." I wish I had last night back.

I still think Don Johnson remains one of the coolest dudes out there. I sure hope this doesn't signal the beginning of his geezer teaser era--maybe it already has and I missed it?

[Mr Sausage]

Loved this film, and have watched it twice with a third only being held back by the righteous indignation it boils up inside of me. I think it's Saulnier's strongest overall effort considering I can't give him all the credit (or even much of it, apparently) for how well True Detective Season 3 turned out. There aren't enough good revenge films made now without a whole lot of Tarantino-aping pastiche (don't get me started on that piece of shit Strange Darling, just let me continue to forget I saw it), and this is a straightforward and intense revenge picture that occasionally flirts with being on the level of something like Rolling Thunder. Aaron Pierre is great, certainly my leader in the clubhouse for male performance of 2024 as of now. Considerable upgrade from Green Room and Hold the Dark, so if you'd sort of felt like Saulnier lost his edge like I did, this would be a good time to jump back in.

Sorry to keep you from forgetting Strange Darling, but you reminded me of it, so I'm having a go at it. That film's manipulations were so unpleasant and needling, and often there just to mock the audience for their credulousness, as if the problem with 'believe all victims' rhetoric wasn't that it, say, goes too far or is too absolutist, but that it's somehow so moronic on the face of it that it has no worth other than the laughter and mockery it can generate. As if there's a real danger of people dying because victims are too willingly believed. Puncturing group think and received thinking is a good thing, but this movie teases us with very real discourse about dangers that women actually face in the real world only to throw it back in our faces with this cartoonish, exaggerated filmic fantasy that even the movie doesn't take seriously. So it's a moralizing, didactic tone on behalf of nothing more than 'gotcha!' But even then, the movie announces from the start that it's trying to mislead you by making it very obvious the chapters are out of order. So...? S. Craig Zahler was also brought up in this thread, but he's guilty of something similar. Dragged Across Concrete is a much more interesting movie than Strange Darlings, but it's organized around so many 'gotcha!' reversals where we're meant to see things from the other side that it, too, becomes facile. If your point is to pull a reversal on everyone's social or political views, you're just a contrarian. And contrarians are by nature dependent thinkers.

Rebel Ridge is honest and upfront about its anger, and not in a strident way. Its biggest and most effective idea is how, contrary to what you're told by people who think toeing the line is your best bet for dealing with the police, deescalation in fact does not work, and there is no incentive for the police to respond in kind or treat cooperation as anything but a sign of weakness. The interactions with the police in this movie are so claustrophobic and frustrating without any sneering villainy or redneck caricatures. The abuses of power are believable and in a lot of cases legal, with abuses of force for example hidden or sidestepped because the system favours them, and everything else above board. I mean that opening traffic stop doesn't need the police to be evil; it's just a persuasive example of how power can be manipulated to perfectly legal ends, all justifiable in a court of law, and yet totally unacceptable and unjustifiable.

Oh, and you can tell the bad faith criticisms when they talk about the lead character like he's a Jason Bourne type of superhuman combatant, when in reality all his combat moves are basic, realistic grappling techniques. It's mostly basic takedowns, back-taking, ground control, and rear-naked chokes, plus standard disarming techniques and gun disassembly. There aren't any fancy or outlandish maneuvers. Everything is as you'd expect if a highly trained, physically fit martial arts instructor fought people who are neither. Any reasonably athletic person who's in shape and has the proper training can do everything you see here, unlike the great majority of action films. The combat here is refreshing in its lack of exaggeration.

[therewillbeblus]

Yes, the film is admirably true to the ethos and practicality of self-defense arts. I'm torn on whether to recommend this film to my dad, who's very pro-cop but also teaches Kenpo and has spent his life talking about and demonstrating the value in minimalized violent acts

[Mr Sausage]

In my experience people who are pro-cop tend to be pro-military, so I think he'll be ok. He's only being asked to pivot his sympathies from one group he supports to another, which is a small adjustment.