Watched Rebel Ridge last week - trailer made it look something like a black version of Jack Reacher, so thought we'd take a look. Turned out it was much better than we might have expected.
The production values are superb, but it also carries a stronger sense of realism - the characters are really well developed with deep backstories, and the action scenes aren't filmed with multiple camera angles to try and enhance a sense of pace but in fact look almost flat - and real because of it. The main character is far less violent than Reacher, anyway, and goes out of his way to avoid casualties.
In the end this was a really tense and engaging thriller about a small-town police force that had become (mostly) corrupted, and how one person was able to blow it open through a really hard and difficult struggle.
The story was so detailed I thought it must have been based on a novel, but apparently it's an original screenplay by Jeremy Saulnier, who seems to have a pretty impressive record as a writer/director.
The production values are superb, but it also carries a stronger sense of realism - the characters are really well developed with deep backstories, and the action scenes aren't filmed with multiple camera angles to try and enhance a sense of pace but in fact look almost flat - and real because of it. The main character is far less violent than Reacher, anyway, and goes out of his way to avoid casualties.
In the end this was a really tense and engaging thriller about a small-town police force that had become (mostly) corrupted, and how one person was able to blow it open through a really hard and difficult struggle.
The story was so detailed I thought it must have been based on a novel, but apparently it's an original screenplay by Jeremy Saulnier, who seems to have a pretty impressive record as a writer/director.
