White Heat
Directed by Jeremy Saulnier
Starring Aaron Pierre, AnnaSophia Robb, Don Johnson
Released September 6th, 2024
Rated R
A man is listening to music while riding a bicycle, unaware of the police cruiser behind him. The officer rams him off the road, and a confrontation ensues. The police take umbrage with the large amount of cash the man is carrying. The man takes umbrage with being thrown off of his bike by the cop car. The man, Terry Richmond (Aaron Pierre) explains that he obtained the cash legally and he is currently traveling to a courthouse to use it to post bail for his cousin. The police officers doubt his story, seize all of the money, and let Richmond go. Richmond can’t believe what the cops have done is legal, so he sets out to get the money back, bail out his cousin, and set things right. Arriving in the town of Shelby Springs, Richmond receives assistance from courthouse clerk Summer McBride (AnnaSophia Robb) and the pair face down corrupt Police Chief Sandy Burnne (Don Johnson). From its opening scene to its denouement, Rebel Ridge is a tense thriller that never lets up.
Rebel Ridge was developed for a few years with John Boyega attached for the lead role, and I have no doubt he would have done a good job, but when you see Rebel Ridge it’s impossible to imagine anyone other than Aaron Pierre as Terry Richmond. It’s more than a star-making performance, it may be a career-defining performance. Pierre vacillates between being humorless to making sly jokes, from being stoic to being warm, from being a badass to being compassionate. Thanks to Pierre’s talents, Richmond isn’t a riff on characters like Jack Reacher or John Wick. He’s more human, more relatable. He may be heroic, but he’s not a superhero.
Probably best known as a younger Carrie Bradshaw in the Sex and the City spin-off The Carrie Diaries, but a promising young actress since 2005’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, AnnaSophia Robb delivers on that promise with her performance of Summer McBride, a young mother dealing with a host of personal problems. Robb has never had a role that asked so much of her, and she knocks it out of the park. It’s an emotional, heartfelt performance that matches her co-star Pierre beat for beat.
Jeremy Saulnier is a talented writer/director whose films often focus on a character who employs violence to escape their desperate situation. While his latest shares that concept, it’s clear Saulnier is challenging himself to do something new within those parameters. Rebel Ridge is saved from becoming a rote revenge movie thanks to Saulnier attempting to stay as realistic as possible with the options our protagonist has if he wants to come out of this situation alive, and still a free man. The conclusion of the film is surprising and may initially feel a tad anti-climactic, but this is because it successfully upsets audience expectations by not going down the path of a standard action movie power fantasy. While the film is violent and very tense, Rebel Ridge has no interest in being a macho might-makes-right fairy tale. Instead, it taps into the frustrations of a segment of society that feels held hostage by the very forces sworn to serve and protect them.
There are plenty of small towns with small town police forces who engage in unfair treatment of citizens. This problem doesn’t come down to a few bad apples, rather it’s a systemic issue built into the way the organizations are run. We need sweeping police reform, and we need it now. I recall reading columns written by Tony Messenger in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that detailed people who were charged with misdemeanor crimes that were being held in jail because they were not able to pay exorbitant fines that did not match their offences. These columns not only garnered Messenger the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, but they also more importantly raised much needed awareness on these unfair practices. My hope is that Rebel Ridge will have the same effect, raising awareness that these practices will not change unless we the people demand change.