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| Don Johnson and Aaron Pierre in Rebel Ridge |
Cast: Aaron Pierre, Don Johnson, AnnaSophia Robb, David Denman, Emory Cohen, Steve Zissis, Zsané Jhé, Dana Lee, James Cromwell, CJ LeBlanc. Screenplay: Jeremy Saulnier. Cinematography: David Gallego. Production design: John P. Goldsmith, Ryan Warren Smith. Film editing: Jeremy Saulnier. Music: Brooke Blair, Will Blair.
Rebel Ridge begins painfully, with the too-familiar image of a Black man being forced to the ground and handcuffed by two white cops. But it recovers from that to become one of the better action thrillers of recent years, thanks to writer-director-editor Jeremy Saulnier's ability to surprise, a charismatic performance by Aaron Pierre as Terry Richmond, the protagonist, and a reliably watchable one by Don Johnson as Terry's antagonist, Chief Sandy Burnne. Granted, the plot of Rebel Ridge is familiar: stranger comes to a small town and tangles with corrupt law enforcement, a trope we've seen in Reacher and the Lee Child novels it's based on, for example. But Saulnier gives his characters depth and he avoids the expected conclusion in which the bad guys get blown away in a spectacularly messy fashion. There are witty moments, too. Terry gets help from several people, including Summer (AnnaSophia Robb), a court house clerk, and Liu (Dana Lee), the elderly owner of a Chinese restaurant. When Terry introduces them to each other, he tells Summer that Liu is a veteran of the Korean War. Summer chirps the familiar "Thank you for your service," whereupon Terry explains that Liu was on the other side. Rebel Ridge is no ground-breaker, but it deservedly won the Critics Choice Award for best TV movie, and we should be seeing a lot more of Aaron Pierre.
