‘Rebel Ridge’ Review: Jeremy Saulnier’s Veteran-on-the-Run Riff Fails to Draw Fresh Blood
variety.comTodd Gilchrist editor Many movies have been made about soldiers whose skill set proves out of step once they re-enter the civilian world.
Some of them treat those differences with empathy and insight; but more often than not, they leverage them for explosive, empty action sequences. “Rebel Ridge” mostly falls perfunctorily in the latter category.
Written and directed by Jeremy Saulnier (“Green Room”), the film’s focus on a Black soldier adds degrees of complexity to the conflicts that erupt between him and local law enforcement in a small, mostly white town.
But if racial politics (cinematic and otherwise) prompt Saulnier to treat him marginally more thoughtfully than most movie veterans, the filmmaker’s obligations to genre formula end up overshadowing those differences by the time the last empty, explosive action sequence has unfolded.
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