Blue Ruin and Green Room director Jeremy Saulnier finally has his latest thriller on Netflix next month. Here’s the trailer for Rebel Ridge:
Buy them a drink or two, and even Netflix’s own executives might admit that the streaming giant’s batting average when it comes to action thrillers isn’t exactly high. But courtesy of Blue Ruin and Green Room filmmaker Jeremy Saulnier, along comes what might be a genuine corker: the long-in-the-making Rebel Ridge.
It stars British actor Aaron Pierre as a former Marine who attempts to post bail for his incarcerated cousin, only to have the bag of cash snatched by a bunch of burly cops. Tension escalates, and matters soon spin wildly out of control as the police realise they’ve messed with the wrong chap.
We mentioned a few weeks ago that the premise sounds a bit like the Sylvester Stallone classic First Blood, and the debut trailer (see below) only confirms it: the action takes place in a small, all-American town, while Don Johnson’s dodgy police chief could be a distant relative of Brian Dennehy’s Sheriff Teasle from that 1982 hit.
If anything, Rebel Ridge looks slightly more action-filled than we were expecting; where Saulnier’s earlier films had flashes of violence, the stage seems to be set for an exceedingly bullet-strewn stand-off here. The glimpse of a big boot on an arm also suggests we’re in for some moments almost as withering as those in Green Room.
The film’s September release marks the end of a long road for Saulnier, with the shoot having initially begun in 2020. Then the global pandemic intervened, before the production was thrown into yet more chaos as original lead John Boyega abruptly left for reasons unclear. Speaking to us in March, Saulnier admitted that the making of Rebel Ridge had been ‘tumultuous,’ and that it saw him “slamming right into the Hollywood I’ve tried to avoid.”
If the trailer’s anything to go by, Rebel Ridge will have been worth the wait – and it could prove to be a star-making role for Pierre, whose previous work has included indie sci-fi Foe and TV’s Krypton.
Rebel Ridge will stream on Netflix from the 6th September.
Read more: Jeremy Saulnier interview | Green Room, Patrick Stewart, Rebel Ridge
