By all accounts, the production to make Jeremy Saulnier’s new film Rebel Ridge was about as perilous as they come. The film originally starred John Boyega and was set to begin filming in April 2020, but production was halted before it began due to the COVID pandemic. In the summer of 2021, the movie finally began filming… but after several weeks, shooting was again halted when Boyega exited the film. Finally, in 2022, the movie was shot to completion with actor Aaron Pierre in to replace Boyega.
The point in rehashing all of that is just to say that no one would have been surprised if Rebel Ridge ended up being a dud. Despite Saulnier’s tremendous track record of success – having written and directed acclaimed films like Blue Ruin and Green Room – doubts do begin to form when a movie has to start and stop production multiple times. **
And yet, when the movie was finally released on Netflix on September 6 of this year, it was instantly a hit both with Netflix users and critics alike.
And the reason is simple – Rebel Ridge is great, and Aaron Pierre feels like the absolute perfect leading man. The movie centers on a former Marine who is unjustly detained by the police and has $36,000 taken from him via civil forfeiture. [The film follows as Terry, its protagonist, tries to operate within the bureaucratic structures that be to get his money back and bail his cousin out of jail.] As is often the case in the movie, red tape and small town politics prove to be almost impossible hurdles to overcome, and Terry opts to take matters into his own hands.
At once a tense thriller and a compelling action movie, Rebel Ridge is a Netflix film that really makes audiences think and consider the world. It tackles real issues like civil forfeiture without ever becoming a biased movie that wears its politics on its sleeve. It’s nuanced, and frustrating, and a movie that uses absolute restraint to bring audience members along for a very tense ride.
Against the odds, Jeremy Saulnier was able to withstand multiple production pauses to make Rebel Ridge one of the best movies of the year so far, and it’s now streaming on Netflix.
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