Rebel Ridge

We see the reliable story trope time and again: the fish out of water. A tourist or someone “just passing through” who ends up on the radar of the local powers that be, and chaos ensues. It frequently becomes the “one-man army” story, such as Sylvester Stallone’s character in the Rambo trilogy, where the authority figures pick the wrong person to mess with. Sometimes, the fish out of water finds help from unexpected sources, like Axel Foley in Beverly Hills Cop. Regardless, we typically see our aforementioned trope framed and detained for familiar, even if completely bogus, charges (“Disturbing the peace? I got thrown out of a window!”). Occasionally we get a story that enlightens us to all of the trappings that lie within the justice system. Enter Jeremy Saulnier’s Netflix hit, Rebel Ridge, about just such a legal loophole.

Ex-Marine Terry Richmond (Aaron Pierre, Old) bikes his way through a small southern town en route to bail his cousin out of jail with a large sum of cash. When a patrol car coasts up behind him and causes an accident, the officers cuff Terry and search his belongings. Despite Terry showing deference, the officers suspect the money as being ill-gotten and seize the cash, forcing Terry to jump through several time-consuming hoops to get it back. This troublesome wormhole coincides with Terry’s cousin being shipped to a penitentiary elsewhere, as the town can no longer hold its inmates. As Terry heads to the police station to repossess his money, he clashes with the local police chief (Don Johnson) who refuses to cooperate. Terry finds himself in the crosshairs of the police when he pushes back on their corrupt ways, only getting counsel from a paralegal who knows of the local law enforcement’s malfeasance and how to fight it.

Rebel Ridge highlights a little-known but common practice in law enforcement called civil asset forfeiture. When police detain a citizen, they can claim suspicion as cause to seize their belongings, such as money, and use them to fund the department. Retrieving the money can take months, if not years, and may result in spending more than what was originally taken. While government officials call it a way to cut off criminals’ resources, specifically in the drug trade, critics have deemed it legalized theft. In the midst of getting tangled up in the department’s scheme, Terry finds that this practice is a go-to strategy for the local police. Once they go the route of physical intimidation, Terry’s military training kicks in, and the conflict between himself and the corrupt officers escalates.

Rebel Ridge does a good job of raising the stakes for its main characters. While Terry appears to be a loner and nomad who can survive off of very little, he has little to no time to hash out his conflict given his cousin’s incarceration. Just the same, his legal counsel, Summer (AnnaSophia Robb, Bridge to Terabithia), is trying to regain custody of her daughter, forcing her to help Terry from the shadows lest her own family’s safety be threatened. Once Terry winds up in a violent showdown with the police, the stakes reach full-blown life and death status.

The Netflix original consists of several strong performances, particularly from Aaron Pierre and Don Johnson. Though Johnson has played many villains in his acting career, his role in Rebel Ridge may remind you of his long-running TV character Nash Bridges, a San Francisco cop who didn’t always go by the book. Pierre’s brooding, stoic nature highlights how the department is singling him out. He is simply passing through the town with the goal of helping out a family member, and he is willing to comply until he is stiff-armed at every turn. We see his veneer slowly shift from patient and calculated to angry and defiant. Such can be any person or an entire community’s experience with authority figures who go out of their way to make trouble for those trying to cooperate or come up with ideas to make things work for everyone.

As with many fish-out-of-water characters, Terry has elite combat skills that he is resisting the urge to deploy. Often, characters who have seen and maybe even committed the most extreme acts of violence vow to never return to that lifestyle. Think of Viggo Mortensen’s character in A History of Violence or the aforementioned John Rambo from First Blood, characters who desperately wanted to maintain an anonymous, peaceful existence until it was no longer an option. These types of characters are often physically imposing in a way that tips the audience off to their capabilities, and we anticipate the inevitable breaking of the dam because their antagonists seem determined to push them too far.

Due to its small-town setting and the protagonist’s Incredible Hulk-like appearance, the best comp for Rebel Ridge is the recent television series Reacher, starring Alan Ritchson. Both consist of fish-out-of-water tropes where the nomadic main character gets pushed to the edge by local authorities and forced to engage in the combat that they thought they had left behind. They each show how crooked politicians or law enforcement can bend rules and use either relationships or blackmail to get what they want. While the protagonists’ fighting expertise don’t exactly make them the biggest underdogs, the sense that they are fighting against a system that is unjust means they will forever be in an uphill battle to achieve that justice.