Writer-director Jeremy Saulnier knows how to craft suspense. His 2007 debut feature, Murder Party, was a fun low-budget horror comedy that was filled with film references. It was a wild picture, but tightly designed. With 2013’s Blue Ruin, 2015’s Green Room, and (to a certain extent) 2018’s Hold the Dark, Saulnier has become THE thriller filmmaker of his time. The new Netflix release, Rebel Ridge, finds him with his finest film to date. This is a superior work and a wire-tight cinematic experience burning with a nonstop tension.

In a powerful and hypnotizing performance, Aaron Pierre stars as Terry Richmond, a former Marine who comes to Shelby Springs, Louisiana to bond his young cousin, Mike (C.J. LeBlanc), out of jail before he is transferred off to a prison where his life will be in danger. Immediately, Terry is harassed and assaulted by two cops, Evan Marston (David Denman) and Steve Lann (Emory Cohen). The cops think he is ignoring their sirens, but Terry is just riding down a backroad on his bike, as Iron Maiden’s “The Number of the Beast” rocks his headphones. Of course, the cops could ride beside him to get his attention, but they choose to slam into his bike and knock Terry onto the road. After a humiliating experience (staying as subservient as he can to get through the incident alive), the two officers take the $30,000 in cash he had on hand for his cousin’s bail under the guise that it could be money from a drug deal. What is the ex-Marine’s crime? Being a Black man alone in a crooked and racist Louisiana town. 

Saulnier’s craftsmanship is immediately on display, as he puts the audience on the edge of their seat right from the opening scene. The director uses powerful closeups of Terry, showing an angry face that holds back a rage born from hundreds of years of racism. The twist being that he must control himself for the sake of the cops’ safety, not his own. 

The incident thrusts Terry into a confrontation with the corrupt local law enforcement run by the ultra-dirty Chief Sandy Burnne (an electrifying Don Johnson). In an incredible moment of white-knuckled tension, Burnne quickly discovers that he and his not-so-good ol’ boys have messed with the wrong Marine. 

Comparisons to Ted Kotcheff’s First Blood will certainly be shouted, though this film is nothing like the  1982 classic, beyond the crooked cops harassing a veteran. As a filmmaker, Jeremy Saulnier is too smart for that and refuses to make Rebel Ridge a mere one-off. He doesn’t fill his film with action, but the promise of an ever-present danger. Saulnier designs his lead character as something quite unique. Terry is highly skilled at non-lethal combat. Make no mistake, while his training was in de-escalation, the man is capable of doing much worse. He doesn’t want to go that far and warns Burnne and his men not to take it there. Terry doesn’t want to draw blood and break bones, but he is certainly capable. Watching him fighting against using his abilities to their full potential (after constantly being pushed to his breaking point) gives the picture an original slant. What the director has done here is smart and creative filmmaking is smart and creative filmmaking. 

AnnaSophia Robb’s Summer McBride works in the local courthouse and (knowing how dishonorable the town’s justice system is) decides to help, as she is tired of being complacent by looking the other way. The actress is quite good and her character is revealed to have deeper layers than the deceptively familiar role would have one believe. Both Summer and Terry find a moral connection, as the two become linked by their connections to what is happening to them both. 

Saulnier did his own editing, keeping an assured pace and making each escalating moment absolutely riveting. For the audience, the film plays out with unbearable tension. The way the director crafts the piece is the cinematic equivalent of Hitchcock’s comment on how he rivets audiences to their seats, “… let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it… The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o’clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one… The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen…” 

For this film’s audience, Terry is the ticking time bomb and with each deadly roadblock Johnson and his men put in the way of his justice, the audience will be paralyzed waiting for him to explode. 

Jeremy Saulnier’s screenplay is sharp and detailed as it unspools its plot ever so carefully. As William Friedkin used his 1985 film, To Live and Die in L.A., to subvert the idea of the cop picture and trick the audience into questioning what they see, Saulnier pulls his own sleight of hand by taking perceived clichés and twisting them into something crucial, fresh, and unexpected.

A refreshing surprise to move us into the Fall movie season, Rebel Ridge is a gripping and effective shot of adrenaline to the modern thriller. This is a fantastic film with a lit-fuse execution as lethal as its lead character. 

Rebel Ridge

Written & Directed by Jeremy Saulnier

Starring Aaron Pierre, Don Johnson, AnnaSophia Robb, David Denman, Emory Cohen, C.J. LeBlanc, Steve Zissis, Zsané Jhé, Dana Lee, James Cromwell

R, 131 Minutes, Netflix, bonneville Pictures, Film Science