Clean Purge

Versão em Português

Rebel Ridge has its fair share of cheap thrills and provocative imagery, it is indeed predicted in the meeting at both, an exploitation movie for progressives who want to get some ACAB catharsis with Netflix sheen and not too disturbing politics. There’s a lot to like about it, but it’s a movie that brings out my inner Pauline Kael, which is not something I particularly enjoy, as I much rather trust movies than suspect them, but Saulnier’s film project, the fact that it sticks very closely to an abrasive genre cinema I like while mostly making sure it domesticates its rougher edges, that it keeps bringing political imagery to the fore while keeping it contained, make me very unsure of what I’m seeing. Rebel Ridge feels like a phony movie, even if its spare parts can often be good.

And they are, what is more annoying about Rebel Ridge is that unlike Saulnier’s early work it feels like half of a good movie, I was even willing to go along with some of its more questionable choices until around Anna Sophia Robb gets conveniently kidnapped to set the latter stages in motion. That so much of the back half of the movie hangs around Robb whose performance is alright but who functions as a mix of exposition delivery machine and damsel that serves to sentimentalize and sidestep the political grenades Saulnier toys with setting up, is indicative of the movie limitations.  The way it keeps setting up righteous political scenarios and they personalizing them away from politics is one of Rebel Ridge more insidious qualities.

It is very skillfully made, the civil forfeiture conspiracy is careful setup and detailed in a way that is satisfying (Saulnier’s script has that meaty best seller that wants to be sure its reader learned a few things about the territory it is covering quality to it). Andre Pierre as the veteran hero and Don Johnson as the corrupt sheriff are wonderful. Saulnier gets the value of their presences, whatever else he gets credit for understanding that a movie like this need people who just stand out and make you believe in the bigger than life logic of their confrontation. Pierre commands the screen so much he patches up a lot of the holes and Johnson is so loathsome as the face of power disregard for people suffering, he becomes a problem later on when Saulnier decides he can’t actually cash the chips he earned. Pierre’s character is a highly decorated martial arts instructor and the movie is packed with great hand-to-hand combat, fast, precise and brutal.

I should make clear that my problem is not that the ending is safe, of course it is, that’s the compromise that was made for a movie such as this to get support, yeah, there is no doubt that authorities will listen, that evidence of Johnson’s misdeeds will guarantee some punishment, that is true of this, or of Lee’s BlacKKKlansman or Bigelow’s Strange Days. Official ideology won’t allow one to make a movie about tearing down the police in the US any more than it does in China, but can’t it like let it burn a little?  Why can’t this conjure some of what Clint Eastwood’s does in The Gauntlet’s climax as his character drives over an entire corrupt police force? The images too clean, the cathartic violence sanitized. Rebel Ridge is one of the better Netflix movies of late, but it feels very much like one.

I’m often reminded of something Molly Haskell wrote about how she loved many classic American movies about women that dealt with its characters freedom and then in the final scenes sent them off to the family prison, making sure they can’t get away with it, those final scenes can be disappointing but they were made with the censors in mind, and who cares about them when the real meaning is in the liberated scenes that come before? Something like Rebel Ridge could operate like this, but its compromises are woven into the movie itself, which is why it limps so much.

The commissioner that will clean up the force in Strange Days feels divorced from everything else in the movie, he is a last second piece of fiction that allows the movie to stage the precipice of social revulsion and back off, the ending here is the opposite, just a natural extension of its careful setup political images. The weirdest thing about Rebel Ridge is how often it indulge in unnecessary both sideisms, does any movie like this one need to repeat multiple times that those guys are family men too? It made me think about how the current American political climate both helps promote a movie like Rebel Ridge as relevant as it makes it hard for it to actually be incisive. Corrupt cops used to be pretty standard villains for a movie like this (think something like the original Road House), but they are now so loaded that someone like Saulnier can canny exploit them while remaining very straitjacket about doing anything interesting with their image.   

The movie plays around with its cathartic violence, its meaning is tied up in scenes of Andre Pierre beating up bad cops, that its violence is limited to broken bones and black eyes, that its retribution must always clarify nothing too serious is happening slowly deflates any force it might have. One rarely gets to watch a violent movie so neurotic about its own violence. It is telling that Saulnier sets Pierre up as Rambo with no kills (the promotional materials try hard to draw the comparison) but doesn’t seem interested in even dwelling on what that might mean; if the non-lethal approach to violence is made into a character beat it might break the illusion of retribution. Pulp can’t really work as catharsis if pulp isn’t allowed to overflow with liberated desire. A movie whose libido is continuously cut short.
 
It makes sense that Rebel Ridge goes from suggesting the whole town is complicit in the damage done by its police force to scapegoat a very corrupt sheriff and this one racist deputy. The movie is predicted in a narrow down of possibilities, phony images of revolt.