‘Rebel Ridge’ Review: Their Corruption, His Destruction

A veteran arrives in a rural town to find his friend. He comes in peace — but the police demand submission. “Rebel Ridge,” written and directed by Jeremy Saulnier, wears its “First Blood” inspirations as boldly as John Rambo sported a patch of the American flag. That franchise distended into Afghanistan, where Sylvester Stallone machine-gunned the Red Army during the long Soviet war there. But Saulnier (“Blue Ruin,” “Green Room”), a specialist in thrillers set in the margins of society, keeps this efficient tale of ethical outrage as simple as a punch to the throat — or rather, given its stark cinematography, like a shot of someone patiently walking up to a bully and then punching them in the throat.

The law remains more or less the same as it was 40 years ago, when it didn’t strain the audience’s credulity to imagine conservative cops loathing a hippie drifter. These Southern officers are nearly all indistinguishable, fatuous men with cropped goatees and dull stares, headed up by a swaggering police chief (Don Johnson) who drawls that he wouldn’t cut a guy a break for “eee-ternal life and a catfish sandwich.”

But today, and with pointed reason, Saulnier has cast Aaron Pierre, a Black actor, as Terry, a former Marine who is simply pedaling a bicycle when he gets stopped and frisked. The officers, played by Emory Cohen and David Denman, confiscate the cash Terry’s carrying to bail out his cousin (C.J. LeBlanc) who’s been arrested on a weed possession charge, plus a few extra dollars Terry intended to use to buy a new truck. Here, as in the real world, “civil forfeiture,” the seizure of money or property from people who have not been charged with or convicted of a crime, is extra income for police departments. (Terry’s situation, not an uncommon one, mirrors an incident reported in The New York Times in 2021.)

The local judge (James Cromwell) won’t help, and the court’s bail collector (Steve Zissis) is unswayed by Terry’s argument that the money to free his cousin is already in the building. (“This is surreal!” Terry sputters.) No one mentions race, not for a long while, and no one has to. The tension is in the cops’ confidence that they can do anything they want to Terry, in how doggedly he remains civil, long past the point where we want him to lose his cool. In one scene, he even appears to bring them doughnuts.

Terry will snap, but the dominant mood isn’t revenge — it’s futility. The recent push for increased oversight of law enforcement is folded into the story, yet the fixes haven’t helped. One plot point centers on when a cruiser’s dashboard camera starts recording, and there’s a running gag about the linguistic shift from “nonlethal” to “less-lethal” weapons that hammers home the idea that the damage hasn’t changed, only the veneer. But the script resorts to a go-there, get-the-thing structure that sends Terry and his only supporter, a scrappy low-level court employee named Summer (AnnaSophia Robb), skulking around to obtain taped evidence of police abuse. Given the unshakable mood of cynicism, it’s hard to get very invested in their quest — especially when we’re already aware of so many similar videos that haven’t changed a thing.