Hello and welcome back to another week of mindless movie reviews. We still have a few more hot days left, but the weather is starting to break here, so it’s time to get out the flannel and hoodies soon. But, that also means that the summer movie season is also about to wind up. Family plans over the weekend interfered with my plan to watch “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” (there is always next week), so I quickly browsed some streaming services and came across “Rebel Ridge” on Netflix. Before I move on and tell you my thoughts, here is the official spoiler warning. If you haven’t seen this yet and don’t want to know what happens, then head over to my home page here and check out some other reviews and lists I have been busy making.
Ok, now onto the main story today. Rebel Ridge is the newest Netflix original movie directed by Jeremy Saulnier. It stars Aaron Pierre as Terry Richmond, someone traveling into a small town (on a bicycle) to bail his cousin out of jail. A cop pulls up behind him, bumps him, and causes him to wreck. I didn’t watch the trailer, so as the officer and his backup start handcuffing Terry, I immediately thought this would be a movie about race. Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of times when race drives a conversation and that whole first scene was heavy in the weeds with it, but the story does shift more toward a corrupt police chief (played by the ageless Don Johnson) and him trying to protect his own.
Personally, I liked that they hinted at the race issues to let us know that it’s a problem without steering the whole movie around it. We soon learn that Terry was trying to bail his cousin out quickly, so he didn’t have to go to prison. He had been an informant at one time and Terry was fearing for his life. He even tried to make a deal so that they could keep most of the money, he just wanted enough to post the bail money.
Summer McBride works in the courthouse and overhears what Terry is going through and decides to help him. She had been doing some research on quite a few cases in town and saw a trend that didn’t look right to her. On a side note, I thought she looked familiar, so I looked her up (thanks again IMDB) and was delighted that I knew her mainly from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” as Violet Beauregarde. But unfortunately, every time I saw her for the rest of the film, I could only picture her chewing gum.
Anyway, as Terry and Summer get closer to the truth, the local police use more force and shady tactics to keep them quiet. After Terry’s cousin dies in prison, they even make him an offer to leave town, but when he comes back to help Summer, everything ramps up again. After a few run-ins, the two hatch a plan to steal some dashcam data that will implicate the chief in what he has been doing.
The story gets a little confusing here as some things happen that I didn’t quite see coming or make much sense. For example, one of the police officers (David Denman) ends up helping Terry and Summer without any indication that was ever going to happen. The whole scene of them breaking into the building to find the flash drives was mostly nonsense. Why in the world would the city store valuable data in a Tupperware container in an old basement anyway? I felt like they were just trying to make the story fit together somehow.
In the end, Terry with the help of now several cops I guess, makes it to the hospital so both Summer and one of the cops can get some assistance and he takes the hard drive out of the truck from the dashcam footage of the big altercation that had just taken place. It seemed like a very sloppy ending to a relatively thrilling movie. It’s almost like they changed the ending at the last minute, but didn’t have time to work through all the kinks of it.
Overall, it was fun… at least the first two-thirds, but most of the actors barely broke out of a monotone voice. For most of the film, Aaron Pierre came across like Keanu Reeves from “The Day the Earth Stood Still”. Barely showing any emotion (even when a tear was rolling down his face). It’s too bad as this was entertaining enough to be a good watch. They just needed to bring the others up to the acting talents of Don Johnson and we would be good. I give this a 6 out of 10!
So, that’s it for this week. Have you seen “Rebel Ridge” yet? If you have, what are your thoughts? Remember, I will be back again next week, hopefully with a review of the ghost with the most!!!
