Rebel Ridge

With each work I watch, I become a bigger and bigger fan of Jeremy Saulnier.

What seemed like a potential for him to be a great director has already come to fruition, and we are witnessing it. Rebel Ridge not only adds another great work to the director's hall, but also shows his versatility.

John Boyega's abandonment of the project may have been a blessing in disguise. Aaron Pierre is magnetic and a force of nature in this film. His presence is felt throughout the story, even in the moments when he is not mentioned.

The film and Aaron perfectly execute this character, rich of complex emotions in a one-man army.

AnnaSophia is not far behind, in a realistic performance of a person driven by a purpose and a true sense of justice, in a work that does not hide from us how the path to truth can be dirty, aggressive and cause destruction.

With a fair length for the story, the film allows itself to breathe, but always progresses accordingly and shows enough flesh in its plot and characters to specify its duration and each character.

I want to congratulate Emory Cohen and Don Johnson for making me despise them from beginning to end in their portrayal of a pair of characters who are the antithesis of everything the protagonists represent, always pushing them to make new difficult decisions.

Overall, it's a great film, with an excellent cast and a story that prioritizes its human narrative over action, but also uses its combat peaks to demonstrate more nuances of each character.

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.

Starts strong, likeable main character and a good villain.

The plot is a bit convoluted and you could cut out 30 minutes without losing anything important.

The biggest downside for me is the ending, it seems like they did not know how to end it and just throw in some stuff to wrap it up during the supposed climax. It lacks the impact that it needed to deliver satisfaction for the viewer. I can't explain more without spoiling it but it's underwhelming.

On a positive note the main character is likeable, if a bit one note, and the main villain does a god job of making you hate him.

The action scenes are okay, nothing amazing but watchable.

To summarise, I would not recommend this over many others that came before and did it better, but if you have 2 hours to kill and have watched the many other films with the same premise and want to watch another one, give it a go, it's on the bottom of the genre but it's passable.

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.