Jeremy Saulnier's New Netflix Film Is Extremely Tense Rebel Ridge firmly in the action category. But where are the stylized hit action movies like the John Wick series or HiGH&LOW movies get their profit from incredible tricks, throws in Rebel Ridge simple and clear enough to seem completely plausible.
Saulnier's previous outstanding films include Blue Ruins And Green room The violence is depicted graphically and bloodily, but at the same time the bloody conflict is transferred to reality. Rebel Ridge has more of a blockbuster build than those films, in terms of its direction and its ending. But still, the fights, as Saulnier stated repeatedly in the Polygon previewconsciously and intentionally “carelessly”.
“I can watch an action hero take out a building of people, and I'm impressed by the stunt work,” Saulnier says. “The choreography is amazing, and I love doing those stunts. But I don't really feel a lot. I don't feel the terrifying nature of what it would be like to fight another human being. So with [Rebel Ridge’s] choreography, I was always there to thwart the stunt team's attempts to make it cooler, bigger, more satisfying. Like, “Slow it down!” or “I don't think that's going to happen!” I was always there to make it sloppy and awkward.”
[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for Rebel Ridge.]
Rebel Ridge stars Underground railwayAaron Pierre stars as Terry Richmond, a black Marine veteran and martial arts instructor who comes to a small Southern town to break his cousin out of jail. He's on a tight deadline with his cousin's life on the line, but the white local police are after him the second he arrives in town, stealing his bail money under the guise of civil asset forfeiture and threatening him with jail time or worse if he refuses.
Terry is a polite, careful, measured man. It's hard to watch. Rebel Ridge without thinking about Ta-Nehisi Coates Between the world and me and other outstanding works about Black Parents 'Talk' to Their Kids about how to handle racially motivated encounters with the police. Terry is clearly familiar with this dynamic and the importance of maintaining composure even in the face of outrageous provocation and outright harassment, and yet it’s clear that at some point he’s going to snap and fight back against the injustice and abuse heaped upon him by the police — especially local police chief Sandy Byrne (Don Johnson).
The entire film is a long, tense wait for the straw that will finally break Terry's back. And there's a natural expectation that — like Sylvester Stallone's similarly aged 1982 film First Blooddealing with equally unscrupulous small-town cops, Terry will leave a cathartic trail of corpses in his wake when he finally lets go of his inhibitions.
But Saulnier didn't want to Rebel Ridge end with a wave of dramatic neck-snappings and body-destructions: He wanted “a traditional American action movie, ideally with a lot of artistry.” And he wanted Terry to feel vulnerable.
“Aaron, myself and the stunt team worked hand in hand. I did my research and saw how martial arts manifested itself in the real world,” Saulnier says. “It’s mostly about gritty holds and just raw strength. There’s a certain amount of technique and knowledge, of course, but a lot of it is about leverage and positioning and not a lot of fancy moves. Wire work never came into play, except for a couple of things to help take the weight off people. I leaned on my strength, which is an awkward reality, and through that, a more real fighting space and more real hand-to-hand combat. And through that, for me, a more dramatic conclusion — a more powerful emotional experience than you get in these big, spectacle-filled films.”
Image: Netflix
Saulnier laughs a little in our interview, suggesting that his stunt team didn’t fully understand why he was deviating from traditional action until they saw the finished film. “We finally showed it to the team in New Orleans last week, and I think they completely understood what I was going for — an emotionally charged, subjective experience of Terry Richmond tearing through these adversaries,” he says.
“There was one instance where we had some pretty cool choreography, and I was in the editing room watching it. And I was really proud of the work we’d done, as an MMA fan and someone who’s researched more fight scenes than I’d like to admit. But it didn’t feel real. So some of the coolest choreography ended up getting cut, because if it didn’t feel completely true to Aaron’s physicality and who he was fighting, it had to be cut. It was painful, but it was fun. The memo to the stunt team was: We pay homage to a lot of films, but we need to forge our own path and make this genre its own..”
Part of that big emotional payoff was that Terry and his allies in the film get a more positive ending than fans of Saulnier’s other work might expect. “I really think people are going to be surprised when they finally see this film, in the level of nuance and layers that are there and the predicaments that everyone is in,” Saulnier says. “Not excusing any of the behavior, but just getting an understanding of why we as humans are in this conflict — and hopefully offering a little catharsis, which is new for me. You know, I’m used to a terrible punch in the gut from a film that leaves audiences in a state of shock or horror. And this film, I think, surpasses that. We had almost euphoric reactions. When you hear people in the theater experiencing this film together, it’s really uplifting and strangely invigorating.”
Rebel Ridge is now streaming on Netflix.