The Rebel Ridge Scene That Just Turned Aaron Pierre into a Movie Star

This article contains Rebel Ridge spoilers.

There is plenty of action in Jeremy Sauliner’s Rebel Ridge, which is streaming today on Netflix. Of course this is something of a given for the director of Green Room and Hold the Dark. Sauliner is nothing if not a filmmaker who knows how to suffuse spartan rural settings with massive amounts of tension—and then often bloody action to release the dread. Yet the scene that got me on my feet wanting to cheer, even in a living room, is not when Aaron Pierre’s righteously vindicated Terry Richmond physically manhandles a podunk police chief before he can unholster his firearm (though that is supremely satisfying!). Nor is it when he similarly zaps another redneck officer with his own taser.

Both scenes are pure gratification to watch, but they’re also apropos of any avenger fantasy about the lone warrior standing against a corrupt establishment. It’s a story at least as old as Spaghetti Westerns like A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)—albeit here it’s given a frightening new urgency in a 21st century context. After all, this is a movie about white police officers attempting to intimidate, rob, and exploit a Black man.

Hence the scene of the movie that really makes you sit up and take full stock of just how fantastic Pierre is in this movie. In the deep breath between Rebel Ridge’s second and third acts, a former Marine and martial arts expert—who has been relatively patient and accommodating to the cops up until now, even after they sent his cousin Mike (C.J. LeBlanc) to his death—reflects on everything which has so far occurred. This includes how the hero attempted to accept (most) of his money being returned to him as some kind of bribe to leave town. In his absence, the local law enforcement plans to continue ruling their backwood parish as if it were a medieval fiefdom.

“When they sent me on my way, I was grateful,” Terry admits with the faintest shudder to the one local brave enough to help him, court clerk Summer McBride (AnnaSophia Robb).  “My whole life was back ahead of me. I even heard Mike telling me it was okay.”

Of course, the reality was that he didn’t have the blessing from a beloved, deceased family member. He wasn’t even bribed. Chief Sandy Burnne (Don Johns0n) just gave him back a fraction of his own money.

“The chief didn’t give me an out, I gave him one,” Terry finally admits to himself. “And that wasn’t Mike’s voice, that was mine. This shit’s far from okay, and these cops might end up on top. I’m not pretending here, but they sure as shit don’t get any more outs. And Mike, I hope he’s in a better place, but I don’t know enough about the afterlife to trust in it. So while I’m here, and he’s not, I gotta haunt these motherfuckers myself.”

This is a fantastic movie star line, written for maximum impact by Sauliner, and carefully drawn out by Pierre like a mic drop at the end of a killer set. An eloquent, dopamine-inducing way to essentially say “let’s make these pigs hurt,” it’s a line of dialogue that, like the entire role, seems tailor-made to transform a performer into a name. Reminiscent of Russell Crowe intoning, “Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife,” in Gladiator, or Samuel L. Jackson promising to “strike down with great vengeance and furious anger” in Pulp Fiction, this is movie-writing engineered to make you remember a character and performance.

Which is all the more impressive when you consider that it was not written for Pierre. Indeed, one of the most remarkable things about Rebel Ridge is how good it is despite gaining a lot of dubious press after actor John Boygea exited the movie mid-production in 2021. The reasons for Boyega’s departure remain a mystery, however in retrospect it brings to mind moments like Hugh Jackman stepping in at the last minute to play Wolverine in X-Men (2000), or Viggo Mortensen joining The Lord of the Rings trilogy mid-shoot after another actor was let go from the production.

Those turned out to be star-making roles for Jackman and Mortensen, and so it may yet prove to be for Pierre. Rebel Ridge is unto itself the type of movie that would be considered a star vehicle in another generation. I’ve already mentioned one Clint Eastwood Western that played with the motif of the lone gunman punishing a corrupt community, and it’s a setup he returned to long after he parted ways with Sergio Leone. Both High Plains Drifter (1973) and Unforgiven (1992) leaned into the concept, and plenty of other films updated it to the modern world with a veneer of Post-Vietnam cynicism: movies like Rolling Thunder (1977) and one of Sylvester Stallone’s calling cards, First Blood (1982), which introduced John Rambo as a veteran suffering from heavy PTSD when some cracker cops decide to pick on the wrong loner.

Rebel Ridge is descended from this archetype, but it gives it an immediacy vital to our moment while the country is only beginning to address the abuses pursued, and often protected, by some members of law enforcement. In the same way that Rambo punishing those who dismissed and belittled veterans felt like cultural catharsis after an ugly war, and ugly culture war, so too does Aaron Pierre shooting Don Johnson with a beanbag gun resemble something approaching cinematic karma.

It all works in large part, too, based on the charisma and conviction of its lead actor as an avatar for justice. The towering Pierre has enough charisma to burn down a whole police station and still had the camera’s attention with a preternaturally still (and steely) gaze. This is such proper movie star shit that it’s premiering on Netflix is a bit of a shame. Because when Terry promises to haunt these dirtbags, audiences deserve the chance to applaud in a crowd.

Rebel Ridge is streaming now.