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| Image courtesy Netflix |
The quality of a film often can be traced to how controlled its production is. Bigger blockbusters often have so many cooks in the kitchen that the product can become an unfocused mess. But films with fewer people tinkering can be more focused and potent.
Jeremy Saulnier’s latest, Rebel Ridge (2024), is one of those tightly controlled masterpieces that creates such high tension that you’d expect an explosion of violence and gore. But instead, this film uses control to keep the focus sharp, the dialogue spartan, and your expectations upended.
Saulnier has created some of those expectations with his last few films: Hold the Dark, Blue Ruin, Green Room, and Murder Party. All of these similarly had high tension, dread, graphic violence, and gore. But Rebel Ridge does something different in keeping tight reigns on the tension and violence on screen.
Most of that control comes from protagonist Terry Richmond (Aaron Pierre), whose 6-foot-3 frame and menacing green eyes exude the subsumed rage of any African-American having a run-in with cops in a rural Georgia town. His ex-military past is revealed in the second act of the film, but his entire stature and speech reveals all the viewer needs to know.
After he is knocked off his bike by a cop car, Terry’s reason for riding a bike through rural Georgia with $36,000 in his backpack is revealed. And so begins the tension that builds and builds. Terry is almost always controlled with all his interactions with the cops, including Sheriff Sandy Burne (Don Johnson).
There’s only a few brief moments where the tension isn’t high and an escalation into messy violence seems inevitable. Most of those moments are the interactions between Terry and law clerk Summer (AnnaSophia Robb), who becomes an ally for Terry.
This film had many opportunities to become another of many different kinds of films: bad-ass hero versus bad cops; wisecracking black hero versus everyone; or melodramatic story exploring race in the South. But anytime the story could veer in those directions, control is exerted to keep the film from being any of these.
Perhaps the best example of keeping the film from sliding into the familiar is a scene in the third act. After tensions and plot have escalated, Terry subdues a cop and steals the radio. He issues a threatening ultimatum to the other cops through the radio. Afterwards, he drolly asks the subdued cop, ‘Did I put too much sauce on that?’
This line, though a familiar trope, becomes a reflexive moment that works like the director asking the audience if this line was too familiar. Or if it was just the right amount of humor to break the tension.
That focused narrative and balanced elements come, presumably, from director Saulnier’s control; he produced, wrote, directed, and edited the film. Fewer hands adding ingredients to the pot make for a more potent stew. And Rebel Ridge is all the better for that laser focus that keeps it from becoming too cliche.
—Eric Beach