One thing a lot of Netflix subscribers have gotten accustomed to over the years is the general mediocrity of most Netflix Original movies. While the streaming service has quite a few bangers when it comes to TV shows, the movie quality—especially in 2024—has been mediocre at best.
Just think of some of the stinkers we’ve had to endure this year: Rebel Moon Part 2 was even worse than the first of Zack Snyder’s space opera flops. It scored a rotten 16% on Rotten Tomatoes. Jessica Alba’s Trigger Warning was an action flick that put most reviewers to sleep, and didn’t fare much better with a 20% Rotten Tomatoes score. Jennifer Lopez starred in the widely panned Atlas, which fared even worse at 19%. None of these movies did much better with audiences.
The one movie Netflix did release that had really good reviews with audiences and critics was Glen Powell’s Hit Man, a Richard Linklater film. That managed a 95% with critics and a 91% with audiences, but it was a genuinely mediocre movie and those scores are baffling to me to this day. I seriously cannot understand why so many people thought it was good.
Even the Mark Wahlberg / Halle Berry spy film The Union failed to wow audiences or critics, with a 39% critic score and a 21% audience score. Netflix has been struggling all year to land a hit.
Finally, however, 2024 has its Netflix Original hit in the form of Rebel Ridge (another Rebel-titled movie but not to be confused with Rebel Moon). At the time of this writing, the Jeremy Saulnier-directed movie has a 95% with critics and 78% with audiences. I watched it last night and it scratched that action movie itch.
In many ways it’s a throwback to older 90s action movies, though perhaps more specifically this is very much a Jack Reacher film without Reacher. Instead, Aaron Pierre plays Terry Richmond, an ex-marine who finds himself in the small Southern town of Shelby Springs facing a corrupt police chief and a whole lot of trouble.
Pierre is very much a Reacher character (the joke “black Reacher” is certainly apt) and Rebel Ridge is a lot like Killing Floor, the first of Lee Child’s Reacher novels and the basis for the first season of Amazon Prime Video’s Reacher series—the good season, not the awful second season. If you don’t mind that it’s obviously quite derivative and you’re looking for a good action movie with likeable leads and a fun little conspiracy, this is great Friday-night popcorn movie entertainment. Pierre is perfect in the role: Huge, muscular and just charming enough to pull it off, with piercing eyes that really convey intelligence behind the muscled frame.
Here’s the trailer:
Richmond isn’t a drifter, but like Reacher he’s ex-military and highly skilled and dangerous. When he’s run down on his bike by a local police officer, things take a turn for the worse. The police search him and find $36,000 in his backpack—his entire life savings—which he had intended to use partly to bail out his cousin and partly to start a business. They confiscate the money using civil asset forfeiture laws, which is a problem for Richmond since he needs to bail out his cousin before he lands in prison where his life is in grave danger.
From here, things go from bad to worse as the local police force turns out to be deeply corrupt, under the leadership of police chief Sandy Burnne (played perfectly by Don Johnson).
Like Reacher, Richmond has to take matters into his own hands, with a little help from a local court assistant Summer McBride (AnnaSophia Robb)—basically the Rosco analog—a woman with a good heart and a murky backstory. There’s a few little twists and turns, but overall this is a straightforward action flick. Other stars include David Denman (The Office) and the always terrific James Cromwell (L.A. Confidential).
Non-Lethal Weapon
One of the things that really sets this film apart from any Reacher story and pretty much every action movie I’ve ever seen is that Richmond isn’t a killer. He uses non-lethal tactics throughout the movie, and the body count by the end is shockingly low for a movie with this much violence. It’s actually kind of refreshing.
Is it perfect? Of course not. While there are moments of humor, this remains a pretty serious affair and I think the best action movies are the ones with a good sense of humor—think Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, Bad Boys and so forth. Is it worth watching? I certainly enjoyed it, but I’m a huge fan of the Reacher books and this type of popcorn action flick. And while it does deal with a black man being unfairly targeted by police, it never feels too preachy. This isn’t a movie that relies on current day politics to work, which I appreciate. It does take a shot at corrupt cops and our unjust justice system, but never at the expense of the story or entertainment value.
If you like this type of movie, give it a shot. I suspect—and hope—that it gets a sequel and that Pierre gets a franchise out of this. Netflix could certainly use some quality action movies, after all. (I liked the Extraction movies with Chris Hemsworth, but there hasn’t been a new one of those on Netflix in a few years).
