Southern-Fried “Justice”
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative. However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, though better options may be on the horizon. (Note: Anything in bold blue [some may look near purple] is a link to something more in the review.)
My reviews’ premise: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”
(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the song’s name)
Here’s the trailer:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge its size;
activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy). To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
What Happens: (Lotta plot here.) We're in contemporary Louisiana (sadly enough, given the events of this story), as Terry Richmond (Aaron Pierre), a former Marine (martial arts expert), is bicycling to Shelby Springs (he sold his car, took some buy-out money from the restaurant he used to co-own in another town) to bring a sack of $36,000 to bail out cousin Mike Simmons (C.J. LeBlanc) who’s been arrested on a drug-possession charge ($10K for the bail, the rest to buy a truck to support a new business for the cousins) when he’s run off the road by a police car driven by Officer Steve Lann (Emory Cohen) who, after some tense verbal exchanges with Terry, confiscates the cash as suspected drug money (even though there’s no clear evidence supporting such action).
Terry’s allowed to go on his way, so when he gets to Shelby Springs he tries to file a complaint against Lann and get his money back, but the courthouse clerk, Elliot (Steve Zissis), won’t even take the information, although local paralegal Summer McBride (AnnaSophia Robb) promises to help him if he can somehow get the $10K for Mike who will soon be transferred to state prison where he’d be in danger after informing on a gangster. At the police station Terry tries to report his money as stolen to Officer Jessica Sims (Zsané Jhé), but that just leads to a confrontation with Chief Sandy Burnne (Don Johnson) who tells Terry to come back at 9am Monday morning. Terry does so, but when he arrives Burnne tells him the bus transporting the prisoners has just left; Terry catches up with the bus on his bike, talks to Mike through a window, tells him to lay low until he gets the bail money which he tries to do from former business partner, Mr. Liu (Dana Lee), although that’s not workable because police recently raided the restaurant due to it being mentioned in paperwork Terry filed. Terry goes back to the police station to demand Mike's $10K but is refused by Burnne who’s ready, along with Lann, to attack Terry, who subdues them both then takes her gun to force Officer Sims to get him into the evidence cage where he grabs his cash, makes her drive him away. He goes to the courthouse, posts bail with Summer’s help, but is arrested. Burnne and Lann then take Terry to a hospital where Mike’s dying from stab wounds (he soon expires) after processing at the state prison.
Burnne offers Terry the remaining $26K to buy his truck, leave town that night, never come back (he also explains how the local police budget’s been cut so these cops frequently arrest people on bogus charges in order to get their bail money before the charges are dropped by a cooperating judge [James Cromwell], then the money’s spent to aid the local community, so he claims the scam's ultimately justified). Terry buys his truck, then gets a call from Summer; police injected her with drugs so she’ll fail her next-morning drug test, jeopardizing custody of her young child (she’s been desperate to keep her job after a messy divorce), so Terry comes over to try to help her that night.
Next morning Terry’s leaving town when he’s stopped by Lann who says Terry faulted on the deal, attempts to kill him, resulting in a bad wound for our guy. Terry escapes, though, meets up with Summer again; they visit Liu who was a Chinese medic during the Korean war so he patches up Terry who goes with Summer to see the judge who admits there was a large financial settlement against Burnne which nearly bankrupted the town so he’s gone along with the scams to get money from innocent victims because there are no public defenders in Shelby Springs to help these people until their cases are dismissed, yet forfeiting bail. Terry and Summer go the courthouse basement to get SD cards with phony dashcam arrest footage; he escapes with the evidence, she’s caught by cops who started a fire in the basement while she was trying to destroy her tainted urine sample. ⇒Terry and Lann agree to meet at Rebel Ridge next morning, exchanging the cards for Summer, but Terry breaks into the police station, subdues Burnne, is surprisingly stopped by Office Sims until many cops return. Lann destroys the cards, says Summer’s at risk of overdosing, leading to a protest by Officer Evan Marston (David Denman), who was at the original confrontation with Terry; Burnne shoots him in the thigh, orders the other cops to kill Terry, blame Marston’s intended-bleeding-out death on him, but Terry successfully fights off most of them (including Lann). Marston tells Terry to activate a police cruiser siren which will record dashcam footage of the assassination attempt, helps Terry administer Narcan to Summer, then these 3 drive off in the cruiser, chased by other cops until Sims smashes Burnne’s car, while the remaining cops switch sides, provide an escort to the hospital for Summer and Marston with state police alerted to clean up this mess.⇐
So What? As I began Rebel Ridge (a somewhat title as it refers to a location not even realized for what was seeming to be an important plot point) I though there might be some long-after-the-fact connections—or at least allusions—to the notable 1967 film, In the Heat of the Night (Norman Jewison), which won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor (Rod Steiger), Best Adapted Screenplay where an accomplished Black man (Sidney Poitier) comes to a Southern city, initially treated poorly by local police until his skills as a Philadelphia detective help him solve a crucial local murder, earning him the respect of the Police Chief (Steiger)—a film with a lot to commend it even though it was competing against, for Best Picture, some other heavyweights: Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn; film won for Best Supporting Actress [Estelle Parsons], Cinematography, also nominations for Best Picture, Director, Actor [Warren Beatty], Actress [Faye Dunaway], Supporting Actor [Gene Hackman, Michael J. Pollard], Costume Design), The Graduate (Mike Nichols [won for Best Director], also a contender for Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay, Actor [Dustin Hoffman], Actress [Anne Bancroft], Supporting Actress [Katharine Ross], Cinematography), and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (Stanley Kramer; won for Best Actress [Katharine Hepburn], Original Screenplay, noms for Best Picture, Director, Actor [Spencer Tracy], Film Editing, Art Direction, Scoring of Music)—… Night also won for Best Film Editing, Sound, was nominated for Best Director, so with all of that contention and triumph I was early-elated that something seeming to have a connection with Heat … was my choice for the week, based on encouragement from a syndicated review by Bob Strauss in my local San Francisco Chronicle, along with hefty support from the CCAL (more on that below in this posting).
Alas, I soon found out my initial assumptions didn’t play out much at all (except for Terry showing his superiority over the local lawkeepers—or manipulators as the case may be), especially with the character of Shelby Springs head cop Burnne who proved to be nothing like … Night’s Police Chief Bill Gillespie, although Burnne supposedly has the overall good of his community at heart with his illegal tactics (which even some of his subordinates finally rebel against—maybe that’s why Rebel made it into the title of this movie?) and likely wouldn’t have ordered the death of Terry on his own until he realized how much danger to his operation this outsider represented, but it’s clear Officer Lann had no such hesitations in a confrontational situation where he’s learned much from Burnne.
So, you may ask, why am I spending so much time and review space citing cinematic treasures from yesteryear rather than focusing more on Rebel Ridge? Essentially, it’s because after the intriguing premise of this movie’s set up with a bit more complexity to the characters than we would initially assume, it rushes to a violent climax ⇒with Terry dispatching many would-be-killer-cops in the midst of much smoke and noise, then leaves us at the end as Terry’s at the hospital, clutching the DVR from the cruiser’s trunk containing the incriminating footage of the previous chaos, giving us no real clue as to how this story will resolve for its primary characters.⇐ Given that this movie’s largely a slam-bang-action-experience, it just doesn’t feel very satisfying to me to lead us to an ambiguous ending more characteristic of Realism’s interpersonal dramas, although here’s one analysis of that closure (8:26, ad interrupts at 5:20, SPOILERS) that compares Terry to Lee Childs’ Jack Reacher character, along with a speculation we’ll get more of what happens next here in a sequel (or maybe even a new franchise). I don’t know that I’d go that far as a rationale for what we do experience in Rebel Ridge, but I’ll agree Terry’s a very interesting character I wouldn’t mind seeing more of (especially after having read many of those Reacher novels and watching the first Jack Reacher movie [Christopher McQuarrie, 2012] with the improbable casting of Tom Cruise in the title role, although I didn’t see its 2016 sequel [Rotten Tomatoes gave it only 37% positive reviews vs. 63% for the first one] nor the Amazon Prime Video series, Reacher [2022-early 2024 presently]).
Bottom Line Final Comments: If you want to watch Rebel Ridge you’ll have to turn to streaming where it exists only on Netflix (Not a subscriber? You could try it for a month for $6.99 with ads, $15.49 without.), as the CCAL’s being considerably more supportive than I’ve been with the Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews at a surprising 95% while the Metacritic average score is also quite high (for them) at 77%. Don’t get me wrong; I think it’s generally a quite intriguing movie for most of its running time (which does get somewhat long considering its contents), but for me it goes off the rails a bit too much at the end unless you relish seeing a bunch of police being beat up by just one other guy (Bruce Lee would be proud of Terry)—which might be satisfying if you’re sick of hearing about cops killing people during traffic stops or after breaking into their dwellings (don’t get me wrong here, either; I’m fundamentally in support of police—including my late uncle, a detective with the Ft. Worth, TX department—but far too often lately I’m troubled by how many incidents there are of what end up being wrongful deaths at the hands of these supposedly-decent-law-guardians).
On the other hand, if you’re upset by radical calls to “Defund the Police” you might appreciate a song I momentarily considered for my usual review-ending Musical Metaphor, the Bobby Fuller Four’s 1965 hit, "I fought the law," because in this narrative “the law won,” but that‘s not really what Rebel Ridge is about so I had to ponder a bit more, could only come up with something I’d used 4 times before (yet it continues to be relevant here), Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” (on his first solo album Full Moon Fever, 1989) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvlTJrNJ5lA as it clearly speaks to Terry’s ordeals from the very first scene of this movie so I’d call it pretty self-explanatory (this video features 2 of Petty’s comrades from the Traveling Wilburys, Jeff Lynne [co-writer of the song with Petty] and George Harrison, both also from the original recording, plus another former Beatle, Ringo Starr). If you’re not fascinated by the concept of the movie (even though Strauss will tell you: “ ‘Rebel Ridge' is a fascinating revenge thriller that seeks intensity through realism, and sometimes even by de-escalation. [¶] It mostly works, too.”), maybe you’ll at least like these songs.
SHORT TAKES
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
Some options for your consideration: (1) September 2024 streaming and TV calendar; (2) Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door wins Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion for Best Film.
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