Rebel Ridge

Yes, this is along the lines of First Blood, but this is a step up. Aaron Pierre is very impressive as the calm hero and Don Johnson just seems to get better the older he gets. So who cares whether the story is original or not when it is one of the most realistic representations of the genre you will ever see. The fights are messy, the violence is limited, but that just makes it all the more real. When there is so little quality being produced either by streaming platforms, TV companies or the big Hollywood studios since COVID it is refreshing to see they can still produce the goods. So enjoy the ride.

The trailer for this makes the film seem like it's going to be an all out action film from start to finish. Instead what you get is a thriller with a little bit of action thrown in. What starts with a man trying to post bail for his cousin, turns into a discovery of corruption in a small town. At no point did it seem like a two hour film, which is testament to how well the pace was kept, slowly revealing more and more details of what's been going on in the town. It would have also been very easy for the writers to just say the lead was ex-special forces, delta force etc. But they change this up from the norm to make it feel slightly different.

Is this something we've never seen before? No. Are there better action/thrillers out there? Yes. But that doesn't mean it's not worth spending two hours of your time watching it. A solid film.

This is so closely related to the Stephen Lara case in Nevada back in 2021. He was a retired Marine, heading to California to start a new life with his daughters. They left him with nothing on the side of the road. No charges, no arrests. Only a "justifiable" reason to seize his money. So much so, there's exact dialogue in the movie that matches the police body cam footage, such as having receipts for bank transactions, saying it's not illegal to carry cash, how the money was going to be distributed, if he doesn't file a suit he might get his money back, etc. The real victim was robbed of $86k cash by Nevada Highway Patrol. Look it up on YouTube. There's a complete documentary on it.

Just finished watching this movie. Checked out some of the reviews, and as one often sees, a lot of people called this movie boring. There were some very similar themes to Rambo: First Blood. But I thought that this movie was really well done. The character development was really good, and the main character was calm, cool and collected for the majority of the film.

The action was great, not over the top, and very realistic. A younger me would have considered the movie slow and boring, but that's because all I used to want before was ACTION!!! The older me prefers the story and character development. There was some great turns near the end that I didn't expect. All in all, I thought it was a solid film. 7/10 for me.

There's a lot more good than bad to this film. Yes its a well trodden path, but what isn't these days. This looks on paper as a capitalisation of the popularity of the Reacher series as a low budget movie with zero hints of John Rambo.

I hate the modern trope of rebooting licences with socially agreeable casting. And this doesn't honestly play like that. Aaron Pierre, i've not heard of prior, but he's done a good job of the given script. He'll do well from this i hope. Don, bless him, loves these roles. Brawl in cell block 99 was a bloody hoot. But we all want to see another Nash Bridges or age appropriate Miami Vice!!

Verdict. Watch it. If you do, they'll make more of the same. There's no budget for CGI, no superheroes, but the entire cast play out this hardcore version of saturday night 80s tv really well. Time not wasted.