‘Rebel Ridge’ (2024)
The latest slow burn from Jeremy Saulnier, the deft hand behind the acclaimed “Blue Ruin” (2013) and “The Green Room” (2015), has the feel of a “Jack Reacher” or “Rambo” film, with a drifter on the wrong side of the law serving up some social justice. The setup is simple, but working out the problem is not. We open with a well-toned young man riding a bicycle through small-town Louisiana. He’s not your typical Lycra warrior – quite the opposite, he pedals with a sense of urgency that goes beyond logging miles; he’s on a mission. The bicyclist, Terry Richmond (Aaron Pierre), has $36,000 in an overstuffed backpack, $10,000 of which is to bail out his cousin who’s in on a minor possession charge. Out of nowhere, a cop car taps his bike and throws him. The resolute and hulking Terry, like Rambo and Reacher, is former military, while the cop standing over him looks like a menacing version of Richard Jewell as portrayed by Paul Walter Hauser in the 2019 film by Clint Eastwood. (Nearly every cop in the corrupt town of Shelby Springs seems to have the same stylist and barber save the chief, played by a game Don Johnson, and the lone woman on the force who’s mostly behind a keyboard.) Johnson’s head honcho takes the money on some pseudo-legal technicality, and it turns out these kinds of shakedowns are a regular thing in Shelby Springs with nearly everyone, even the judge (James Cromwell), in on the scheme. Terry is not leaving town without the money or his cousin, though, and the depths of local misdeeds are further exposed when Terry gets a reluctant hand from court paralegal Summer McBride (AnnaSophia Robb, “Soul Surfer”). Nothing is made about race outwardly in “Rebel Ridge,” but it’s there; in one scene, when pulled over, Terry asks the officer, “Are my hands in the right place?” Pierre (“Foe,” “Old”) does much with his emotive eyes and carries the film with a brimming rage that is tamped down constantly in favor of the more strategic move. There are many fine and realistic action sequences, but the film is as much a chess match of legal gamesmanship – yet when Terry acts, it is with the brutal, surgical precision of a martial arts expert trained in disarming and disabling. As the single mom with everything to lose, Robb is a standout, though Johnson and the rest playing the corrupt cops – and a few not so corrupt – are nuanced and polished in their supporting parts. It’s a well-executed thriller that lands somewhere between “And Justice for All” (1979) and “First Blood” (1982). This is the action film to put in your queue.
‘The Union’ (2024)
With a star-studded cast featuring Oscar winners Halle Berry (“Monster’s Ball”) and J.K. Simmons (“Whiplash”), the reliable box office draw of Mark Wahlberg and a world-hopping budget, on paper “The Union” has all the ingredients for a mission win. Yet, like other recent Netflix-produced actioners( “Spenser Confidential,” “The Gray Man” and “Red Notice”), it falters in execution. Our can-do heroine Roxanne Hall (Berry) works for The Union, a CIA-like organization – think of it like the IMF in the Tom Cruise “Mission: Impossible” films. The opener has Roxanne, looking like Irma Vep as she darts through the alleyways of Trieste, Italy, arriving at the critical checkpoint too late, losing the assigned package and her entire team. To get that package – a hard drive bearing a coveted secret – the mission requires an “ordinary Joe” to go to “the auction.” Roxanne suggests her high school ex, Mike McKenna (Wahlberg), who still lives with his mom in Bruce Springsteen-worshipping New Jersey and hooks up with his seventh-grade math teacher (a very wry Dana Delany, who scores one of the film’s high points). Roxanne’s higher-up (Simmons) isn’t too keen on the idea, and gets even less so after Mike loses $4 million on his first foray. Directed by Julian Farino, “The Union” boasts a smattering of fine shootouts and car chases through the streets of London, but the rest is generic MacGuffin spy mash with a lazy ladling of rom-com. The leads have chemistry but are hobbled by the thin construct and mushy dialogue that often unnecessarily explains deets about “the Union” and “the auction.” If you do make it to the end, stick around for the credits, when pics of Roxanne and Mike from high school roll. Someone had a good time digging up teenage snaps of Berry and Wahlberg and fusing them. Besides Delany and a neat “Good Will Hunting” zinger, it’s one of the rare, well-earned grins in the film.
For What it's Worth 