Flasz On Film

From The Virginian, The Bravados and The Sword of Doom through Get Carter, Rolling Thunder and First Blood and then all the way up to Taken, John Wick, The Equalizer, The Beekeeper and many more than I can count or even think of, the microgenre of stoic competent men drawn to the path of vengeance has always been alive and well. In fact, it’s as old as storytelling itself and although it had its heyday in the 60s and 70s, the idea of watching men doing something they at great at doing while seeking some form of catharsis in divine retribution will always remain a vital part of the fabric of cinema. For all I care, it’s a primal tantric ritual for adepts of action of all ages to seek escapism in the wish fulfilment fantasy of this ilk.  

Even though the primary modality of cinematic entertainment has been long hijacked by spandex-clad superheroes courtesy of Marvel and DC, nostalgia sequels taking aging millennials and gen-Xers to their salad days and other assorted slop, there have always been champions of the brooding sigma type, from Don Siegel and Paul Schrader to Taylor Sheridan and, yes, Jeremy Saulnier. Having taken a break from directorial work following his 2018 Hold the Dark and a few episodes of True Detective, Saulnier has come back with a country noir incarnation of First Blood starring Aaron Pierre as a sullen assassin who treats words like currency to be spent and he knows he only has some loose change in his pockets.  

The premise is archetypal. Pierre plays an ex-Marine who suffers mistreatment at the hands of power-crazed backcountry cops. They confiscate money we learn he has been carrying to the courthouse to bail out his cousin, rough him up and slap him with a citation. Just because. You know the drill. The fish rots from the head and these local law enforcement officers run a racket overseen by the local police chief (Don Johnson) who isn’t in the habit of making exceptions and, as you may imagine, has no idea that he’s about to find himself a worthy opponent who isn’t willing to roll over for him. Unstoppable forces and immovable objects. If you have ever seen First Blood or Rolling Thunder (or John Wick or any other revenge fantasy for that matter), you will know exactly where Rebel Ridge is going to go and how it’s going to go about going where it needs to go. Which is exactly what this movie needs to be. Simple. Effective. Unburdened by world-building and laden with visceral wish fulfilment energy middle-aged dads can detect with the efficiency of a cat smelling catnip locked behind two sets of doors in a triple-bagged sealed container adorned with a label of “kitty crack.”  

Put simply, Rebel Ridge ain’t here to reinvent the wheel. It’s here to put that wheel to good use and bring about the kind of entertainment we rarely see these days despite the fact there always is a sizeable audience for it. Hell, if you ask me, this is the kind of movie I personally can geek out to in a way twenty-somethings react to Deadpool or whatever Marvel has in store next. And judging by how well Rebel Ridge has been received based on the word of mouth harvested anecdotally in the deep waters of microblogging social media platforms, the need for dad cinema continues unabated. Sure, Disney and Marvel dominate the box office and it’s unlikely for this supremacy to be challenged anytime soon; therefore, I’m not going to kid myself and think that movies directed by Saulnier, Sheridan or David Mackenzie can successfully hold the box office for longer than two weeks as a piece of counterprogramming to more populist blockbusters. We might see such movies dumped unceremoniously in the dead of winter, like Plane, but dad-centric competence pornography has found its home on streaming services where middle-aged men can more easily turn to after a hard day of doing their thing in the nearly complete absence of appreciation. Two clicks of a button and you’re there.  

Much like other Saulnier films, Rebel Ridge just isn’t a movie you go out to see. It’s a movie you turn your TV on for. It’s there when you need to escape the woes of your daily existence and inhabit the world of Terry the martial arts expert who remains Zen until pushed to the breaking point. Who speaks only when he feels it’s necessary to open his piehole. And who means every word of it.  

Thus, Saulnier’s movie provides nothing more and nothing less than pristine wish fulfilment entertainment with a procedural hint and enough of a dramatic core to keep you emotionally invested in the proceedings. It’s a movie you feel you’ve seen a thousand times and in fact it might just be a movie you have seen before because it’s magic is in the ritual not in the novelty of what’s on offer. Saulnier’s shootouts aren’t necessarily inventive or flashy. They’re slick, functional and steeped in on-the-ground realism of the violence they involve. In fact, the deployment (or insinuation thereof) of violence is something Jeremy Saulnier has been particularly fond of throughout his career. Think of the way Macon Blair’s character ends up in his debut Blue Ruin. Think about what happens to Anton Yelchin’s hand in The Green Room. That last one? Haunts me to this day.  

Interestingly, with Rebel Ridge Saulnier’s thirst for blood seems to have mellowed somewhat, though not entirely. It is still a firmly grounded movie where bullets tear through flesh without pretending otherwise. Where people bleed and suffer. However, what I find intriguing is that the filmmaker shifts some of his focus towards psychological torment as opposed to physical one. This helps the movie because it envelops you more in the horror that visits upon Terry and his sidekick Summer (AnnaSophia Robb), tightens the movie’s stranglehold on you. Equally, especially in comparison to other Saulnier movies, it lightens the narrative considerably. In fact, it might be the most accessible and easily rewatchable movie Saulnier ever directed. I don’t see myself revisiting The Green Room any time soon even though I consider it a masterpiece. I do however think I’ll come back to Rebel Ridge in no time. Maybe it’s the post-First Blood relatability of the central character. Maybe it’s the simplicity of the drama. Or maybe it’s the fact that out of all his movies, it’s the one that doesn’t descend upon your own cerebrum like a dense and all-consuming fog of oppressive and violent storytelling, as though to compete with your own depressive thoughts and exhaustion of existing in a world that doesn’t give two shits about you. It’s gritty. But in a goldilocks kind of way. Not too much. Not too little. Just enough.  

Hence, if you’re looking for a piece of escapist wish fulfilment entertainment with scant worldbuilding and immediately accessible dramatic core, all centered around an archetypal John Rambo-esque avenging angel dropped in the midst of a Lehane-like country noir, Rebel Ridge has got you covered. In honesty, it’s probably the perfect gateway drug to introduce any tired dad to Jeremy Saulnier’s cinema of guys going hard, bullets tearing through flesh and horrors finding their way into people’s lives simply because we live in a world where other people live too.  

The vengeful samurai archetype lives on in movies like this, just as much as it does in high-profile fare for younger audiences. Together with stuff like The Equalizer, Rolling Thunder and others, Rebel Ridge is a heroic bloodshed movie for dads who don’t care about the spectacle anywhere near as much as they do about simplicity, verisimilitude and the purity of engaging in the act of watching competent people doing what they’ve been trained to do while secretly hoping they could do that too. It’s clear as day that John Wick is not supposed to make sense as a real-life character. But there’s probably a guy like Terry somewhere out there in America, just as there was always a good chance a guy like John Rambo could walk through your hometown and get arrested for vagrancy. And seeing a guy like that on screen—a guy who’s just about as workaday-looking as he could but equally special because of the skills he has acquired through his training and education—is like kitty crack for a dad prone to zoning out at random occasions and imagining scenarios where he too could be as competent and charismatic as that guy from Rebel Ridge.