Rebel Ridge, on Netflix: a delightful thriller between Rambo and Jack Reacher

Blue Ruin and Green Room director Jeremy Saulnier has made a hyper-tense film, fueled by the explosive mood of contemporary America.

The argument of Rebel Ridge is not very far from that of Rambo : while he hadn't asked anyone for anything, a former soldier finds himself having to face narrow-minded cops who reign supreme over their little corner of America. The difference is that our neo-John Rambo is black, which changes a lot of things, especially in the eyes of the authorities in Shelby Springs, a small (fictional) town in Louisiana. Relieved by two corrupt police officers of the 30,000 or so dollars he was carrying on him to pay the bail of his cousin, Terry Richmond (Aaron Pierre, revealed in The Underground Railroadof a crazy magnetism) chooses not to let it happen and to stand up to the local sheriff, played with his usual country anger by Don Johnson.

From there, Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin, Green Room, No Man or Godthat's starting to make a nice CV) will have fun building up the tension by organizing the friction between his antediluvian Western scheme and an ultra-documented dive into today's America, between endemic racism, public services in disarray, corruption at all levels, without forgetting the Wi-Fi problems in the police stations of the South… Through its mixture of tortuous narrative ramifications and action scenes filmed on a powder keg, Rebel Ridge sometimes evokes the Jack Reacher by Christopher McQuarrie, minus the pop carefreeness, plus the political anger. Above all, it confirms the singularity of Saulnier's vision, who here writes a new and brilliant chapter in an old story: that of the war that Americans, when they are not busy fighting overseas, cannot help but wage among themselves.

Rebel Ridgeby Jeremy Saulnier, with Aaron Pierre, Don Johnson, AnnaSophia Robb… On Netflix.