C’mon Netflix.
You’ve had your streaming service for 17 years now and you STILL don’t know how to release a movie!
The only reason I knew Rebel Ridge came out on Netflix this weekend is because I saw a couple of you guys talking about it.
The strange thing is that they seem to know how to promote shows. Their good shows always do well. But I can’t remember a single true breakout Netflix movie. And that may not be because they don’t have one. It’s because they don’t know how to let anyone know they exist!
This comes down to Netflix arrogance. The second they dropped the first ten episodes of House of Cards and declared, “BOOM!” as if they’d finally proven string theory, they assumed that every industry-changing move they made was genius.
Not promoting movies was their next big idea and they’ve been so stubborn about proving they were right, they seventeen-fold-downed on the practice.
Who honestly thinks that a movie is going to do well if nobody knows about it!?
I remember a long time ago when Mike Judge came out with his movie, Idiocracy. Because of some weird issues within 20th Century Fox, they decided not to promote it. Believe it or not, they didn’t even have a poster for it at first! If you went to the theater and saw all the movie posters of the movies they were showing, all you saw for Idiocracy was a blank white poster with the title “Idiocracy” written in generic font.
It made me wonder what would happen if they didn’t promote the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel which, at the time, was one of the flashiest franchises going. Would people actually show up?
Of course SOME people would show up. But it’d probably be like 1/5 of what the audience would be if they had promoted it.
I just find it weird that Netflix allows so many of their movies to show up and die on their app. Nobody will know what Rebel Ridge is in a week.
The question is, should they?
Cause three of you in the comments section called it the best film of the year.
I read the script four years ago when Jeremy Saulnier was first going to make the movie with John Boyega before Boyega ran away from set and never came back. Even though I reviewed the script, the review no longer exists on the site. Why? I have no idea. It disappeared.
My question to the three people on the site who loved this movie is: ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MINDS???
All the issues that were on display in the script were in big bright Netflix lights here as well.
It’s no secret that I like a simple well-told story. I don’t like when stories get unnecessarily complex, when too many elements are thrown into the mix. I don’t like when plots jump around too much. The only time I like that stuff is when I’m in the hands of a true master and I can feel the confidence in the writer’s hands that he’s going to deliver.
Rebel Ridge does not move that way.
It’s a movie that never seems to know what it is.
Let me give you a quick breakdown of the plot so my analysis doesn’t confuse you.
Terry, who’s black, bikes into a racist southern town to bail out his cousin who’s being kept in a nearby jail. He’s got a stack of money on him to do so.
But he gets stopped by racist cops who not only give him a ticket for “evading pursuit” but they take all that bail money and tell him he can’t have it back. Terry’s mad so, later that day, he charges into the police station to make a complaint about the cops. An even bigger racist captain tells him to screw off.
He leaves and goes to talk to a female lawyer in town who’s kind of helpful. He goes back to the station again, then he leaves again, then he goes back AGAIN, then he leaves and comes back AGAIN, ties up all the cops, gets the money, and goes to bail out his cousin, only to, after getting the bail through, get arrested for tying up all the cops.
His cousin is killed in jail, possibly because these cops put a hit out on him. The captain then gives Terry a car and some money and tells him to leave town. But Terry is determined to even the score so he teams up with the lawyer to expose their corruption.
At one point they end up in a dungeon somewhere. It’s very confusing. Finally, there’s this shootout by the station and, for no clear reason that I’m aware of, the very same racist cop who stole his money at the beginning decides he’s going to team with Terry because it’s the “right the thing to do” or something. It’s apropos that it’s the first football Sunday of the year because, from there on, the movie stumbles to the finish line.
It was just. So. Sloppppyyyy.
I don’t like sloppiness in storytelling.
Why are we taking four separate trips to the police station in the first act when we could’ve gotten it done in one? Or at most two! Screenwriting is about efficiency. You don’t want to do anything more than you have to. And you definitely don’t want to repeat beats.
As I said in my script review, this movie could’ve been awesome if Terry held everyone hostage in the police station for the full movie. And a group of cops show up outside surrounding the place. You’ve got a great contained thriller if you do that. But all this back and forth and back and forth destroyed the story’s momentum.
Another thing that drove me nuts was that these cops were letting this dude have his way with them. This guy LITERALLY stole their guns and tied them up in their own station and the next scene is the captain giving him 10 grand and a new car and telling him to leave town!
WHY NOT JUST KILL HIM???
There’s literally NO REASON why they didn’t kill him other than that the writer saved him. That’s it. And that’s unforgivable to me. You can’t be your hero’s guardian angel. If your bad guys, who demonstrated they had zero morals right from the opening scene, don’t kill this guy after he breaks twenty laws in their town, including holding them hostage while he steals their money, that’s only because you’re saving him.
And if your response to that is, “They couldn’t kill him because it would’ve been too obvious and they don’t want trouble,” I’m not buying it because they just killed his cousin!
I cannot remember a screenplay that frustrated me as much as this one.
So then why is the film getting such good reviews? I know the answer to this. It’s the ‘ace in your sleeve’ move that every screenwriter has at their disposal: If you give us a character we love who someone else is taking advantage of and you execute that character well, the readers and the viewers will become blind to any plot holes in the movie.
When we like someone – and particularly in a movie like this where we really want justice for Terry – we don’t see the cracks in the screenplay. We just don’t. And that’s the one thing Jeremy Saulnier got right. He got that main character right.
But, to me, the plotting was so egregious that I couldn’t overlook it. I mean that stupid lawyer plot was soooooo dumb. That little side journey we went on with her in the second act? I could barely contain my fury that she was in the movie.
This should’ve been a simple story about Terry getting that money back. 90 minutes in and out and it would’ve been great. Because, like I said, the character worked. Instead we get all this nonsense in the meantime. I strongly strongly discourage anyone from watching this film. Watch the first scene for Scene Showdown. But, after that, save yourself and go watch some football.
Okay, we can’t leave without talking about Beetlejuice Beetlejuice! A 110 million dollar box office bonanza built around Michael Keaton trying to either entertain or annoy us to death. I can’t decide which. I had no idea this franchise had this kind of box office power. The only way I can make sense of it was that the Netflix show Wednesday (which also starred Jenna Ortega and was directed by Tim Burton) was such a smash hit for them. And all those people came out to see a continuation of that team-up.
Good for everyone involved. 2024 has taught us over and over again how stingy the average moviegoer is. To make 110 million dollars off of something that has no superheroes, no spaceships, and no fast cars, is a gigantic accomplishment.
Next weekend I’m very excited because I’m going to see Speak No Evil. It looks awesome. As you know, I love it when a movie comes out that could’ve been a spec script. No special effects. All it has is people talking. Yet here it is, with a wide release. I can’t wait. I’m not going to look up any of the reviews or anything. I want to go in as naked as I can. Go watch it too so we can discuss it afterwards.
