Hold onto your cash, 3.5 readers. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
In my humble opinion, Netflix puts out a lot of crap, and I mean a lot. Most of it is unwatchable. One wonders why I even subscribe, but that’s a whole other conversation for another day.
At least once, maybe in a blue moon twice, a year, they put out one really good movie. For me, last year’s was Reptile. This year, they were due, and Rebel Ridge is it. Again, that’s my opinion. Maybe you think this is trash and another one of their offerings that I thought was trash you enjoyed. It’s all subjective.
This movie reminds me of Rambo, not the international warrior from Rambo 2 and 3, but the ex soldier in 1, who was just taking a walk, minding his own business, when a jerk cop hassled him, it escalated and a small town turned into a war zone.
In this case, Aaron Pierre plays Terry Richmond, a man with a simple mission. He’s visiting a small town with a large stash of cash in his backpack to bail out his cousin. Alas, he is quite rudely stopped by the local police, who perform an impromptu civil forfeiture of Terry’s cash on ridiculous, trumped up charges. The cops explain to Terry that he’s free to fight the move in civil court, but to do so will take years, cost him more than he lost, plus if he does, they’ll file one bogus criminal charge on him or another.
For most people, this terrible experience would just be a painful and very expensive learning lesson. Do not walk around with that much cash.
But Terry is in a real bind. His cousin, Mike, ratted on some bad dudes in the past. Bail for his current offense would just mean he is released and likely to just get light sentence, but if he isn’t bailed out, he’ll be transported to county jail, where friends of sad bad dudes ratted upon reside, and well you know how that will play out.
And so, the local cops learn the hard way that Terry was the wrong hombre to mess with. He’s actually a soldier who trains other soldiers how to fight. And boy is he ever in for a big brawl because this corrupt force isn’t lying down easy.
You see, noble reader, the true villain of the movie is (try not to yawn) civil forfeiture law. It’s been in the news the past few years with countless stories about how people’s money, homes and livelihoods are snatched up by the government with reckless abandon, all based on a suspicion, and it takes years and oodles of more money to fight it to get the confiscated property back, if that ever even happens. As the flick explains, the po po only take the allegedly illicit property to court so rare is the case where a judge actually hears the owner’s side of the story.
And a super corrupt police chief played by Don Johnson has gone in deep with civil forfeiture, such that he’s funded his own private little fiefdom. Anna Sophia Robb tags along as a plucky court clerk/law student who explains the whole ins and outs of civil forfeiture to us dumb audience folk and occasionally get into peril and needs to be rescued by Terry.
SIDENOTE: When I saw her I immediately said, “That’s the kid from Bridge to Terabithia!” Yep. But all grown up now. Time is an MFer.
The good? There’s a lot of action and really did remind me of the first Rambo film.
The bad? It all seems to escalate unnecessarily. There are times when it seems like a no brainer that both sides would just give up and walk away. I know this is a film so that can’t happen, but there are a lot of contrived happenings to explain why Terry and the cops keep going at it.
My ultimate complaint, this, Bad Boys and Axel F were the best action movies of the year and they all depicted corrupt cops as the villains. Does it happen? Sure. Does it happen as often as Hollywood would like us to believe? Hardly. It just feels like Hollywood is so afraid of offending any other possible group that when it comes to action flicks, they’re only willing to cast cops as the bad guys.
Bookshelf Battle 