Commentary: ‘Rebel Ridge’ Sacrifices Character To Create Tension

By their very definition, stories are contrived situations. Writers are manipulating characters and their actions in order to create certain circumstances. It doesn’t matter if it’s a drama, a comedy, or an action story, these are all artificial and fabricated events created to accomplish some sort of goal. In the case of a comedy, that’s to make the audience laugh. In a film like Rebel Ridge, the goal is to create tension and frustration that it’s main character has to work through. The hard part is to elevate tension to extremely strong levels while still portraying characters as independent and natural-seeming individuals. Although the film does a great job with the first part, it struggles mightily with the second.

As it begins, Terry (Aaron Pierre) rides his bike into town in order to post bail for his cousin. The tension kicks off as an officer tries to pull him over, but Terry doesn’t hear or see him. So the officer responds by hitting his bike with his car, causing Terry to fall. His money is confiscated, and Terry struggles to get it back as the cops in this small town run a criminal enterprise to steal the cash they seize. As a military vet who used to train soldiers in hand-to-hand combat, Terry clashes with them throughout the film in order to get justice for his cousin and bring the corrupt officers down.

Right from the beginning, the film ramps up its tension to an extreme degree as Terry is unjustly detained by the police officers. But the cop did not have to hit his bike with the cop car. There were plenty of other things he could have done to get his attention. This trend of unnatural character choices continues throughout the film as the officers constantly harass Terry even though they know he is quite capable of taking them all down. This becomes doubly true in the third act, when many of the officers decide to do the right thing in the end. They could have done that at any point during the film! The movie does a masterful job starting with high tension and keeping that tension throughout. It’s just unfortunate the film’s characters need to make bizarre choices in order to keep that tension going.

Rebel Ridge is now streaming on Netflix.