Rebel Ridge (2024)
Directed by Jeremy Saulnier
A former Marine confronts corruption in a small town when local law enforcement unjustly seizes the bag of cash he needs to post his cousin's bail.
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3 films that influenced Rebel Ridge
What critics say influenced Rebel Ridge
Rebel Ridge is a smart action thriller in the First Blood mode and is elevated by Pierre’s terrific central performance.
It’s a story at least as old as Spaghetti Westerns like A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)—albeit here it’s given a frightening new urgency in a 21st century context.
Both High Plains Drifter (1973) and Unforgiven (1992) leaned into the concept, and plenty of other films updated it to the modern world with a veneer of Post-Vietnam cynicism: movies like Rolling Thunder (1977) and one of Sylvester Stallone's calling cards, First Blood (1982), which introduced John Rambo as a veteran suffering from heavy PTSD when some cracker cops decide to pick on the wrong loner.
In interviews, Saulnier has name-checked Ted Kotcheff’s 1982 survivalist classic, First Blood, which similarly pitted a one-man wrecking crew against a phalanx of good old boys in blue. A key cinematic text of the Reagan era, First Blood is both smart…
Our review of Rebel Ridge, on Netflix now:
Riding into view like a heavy metal riff on Ted Kotcheff's First Blood, Rebel Ridge has one of the most electrifying openings of any thriller uploaded to Netflix so far.
Rebel Ridge is a smart action thriller in the First Blood mode and is elevated by Pierre’s terrific central performance.
We are in the Stallone-meets-Western zone, and with the protagonist (Aaron Pierre's Terry Richmond) being an ex-Marine well-versed in combat, there is immense potential for a Rambo-like one-versus-many actioner.