Rebel Ridge Lands a Punch 

REBEL RIDGE. It may seem silly or outmoded to continue to subscribe to the auteur theory. It is, after all, a 70-ish-year-old French construct whereby a bunch of critics who wanted to make movies could attribute the success or failure of a project to a person's singular vision; seems almost quaintly mid-century, almost without the death-smell of late-stage capitalism. The very notion is fallacious, an exercise in ongoing, active cognitive dissonance that ignores the definitively collaborative nature of filmmaking as an artform in order to elevate the individual. It is also, or at least has been, a predominately chauvinistic, exclusionary school of thought, so that's not great either.

But I would like to think that our collective thinking, or whatever miniscule proportion of it is ever dedicated to such ephemeral nonsense, is subject to change and growth. Which is to suggest, in this context, that while the notion of authorship of something as necessarily multifarious and happily accidental as the making of movie may be arcane and prejudicially simplistic, we may not all want our entertainments homogenized, rendered unto us by committees within committees or a self-justifying process.

I'm tilting at windmills and complaining about centralization and commodification again, but I do it in service of art that defies our recent norms while also fitting into the nebulous frame of cinema in the 21st century as a work in progress. I'm as prone to misplaced nostalgia as anyone, but I also subscribe to the notion that where and what we are, including the entertainment by which we define and/or distract ourselves, is all part of a continuum. Keeping an eye on the past as a measure of forward progress might seem regressive, but it might also be the only landmark we've got.

Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin, 2013; Green Room, 2015) tends toward the more erudite end of the spectrum of contemporary violence auteurs — most of them American and white — who have managed to make and sustain careers of their particular type of popular entertainment. None of them works alone, of course, and it would be a folly to discredit their collaborators, but they are among an old and endangered species of popular artists who can continue to make and distribute their own projects for an ostensibly wider audience than ever.

With Rebel Ridge, a notably modest follow-up to the mildly supernatural, Alaska-set Hold the Dark (2018), Saulnier (who writes, directs and edits) continues his exploration of vengeance, wrath and the American experiment with a First Blood/Rolling Thunder-adjacent story about institutional racism, malfeasance by law enforcement and the increasingly stultifying atmosphere of rural communities in this country.

Having liquidated his assets for a gravel bike and a takeout bag full of cash, Terry Richmond (Aaron Pierre) has a strict deadline with a county clerk to bail his cousin out of jail. Before the rescue can get underway, though, Terry finds himself detained without charge by the town's sweaty, beady-eyed cops. His legally gotten tender seized as drug proceeds, he is left with seemingly nothing to either help his cousin or combat systemic injustice. But Terry is a person of singular means and a willingness to bring war to power.

From my perspective, Saulnier's previous project, while brutal and frequently beautifully executed, tried to reach beyond the simple elegance of his best work. Not to say it was unsuccessful; rather an experimental expansion that might have diluted its own sauce with some misbegotten grandiosity. But Rebel Ridge, for its apparent simplicity and its occasional similarity to a certain recent Amazon series about a giant do-gooder who is certainly not Tom Cruise, returns to the themes and techniques that have made Saulnier a writer and director of great interest. Understated, but with a distinct look, tone and methodology, it doles out violence at a satisfying clip, with the bad guys getting theirs often and savagely enough to elicit the occasional, involuntary "yuss."

By most lights, this is an exercise in pure action, but it departs from the modern norm, whereby that action is so frequently limited to horror or "live action" (read: overwhelmingly artificial) comic book adaptations. Its violence is in service of a story and is carried off with a distinct vision and devotion to the reality rendered by that vision.

The powers that be don't really give awards for stunt work or fight choreography; this is old news. But we as an audience may have also forgotten, to some extent, that the action genre, the cinema of violence, contains multitudes. The quality and our experience thereof will, of course, vary as wildly as one's moods. But there are still devotees out there, Saulnier among them, plying the trade and giving us what we may not have realized we wanted. 131M. NETFLIX.

John J. Bennett (he/him) is a movie nerd who loves a good car chase.

NOW PLAYING

ALIEN: ROMULUS. Do you want chest-bursting, face-hugging, acid-bleeding Xenomorphs? Because colonizing space is how we get chest-bursting, face-hugging, acid-bleeding Xenomorphs. R. 119M. BROADWAY, MILL CREEK, MINOR.

AM I RACIST? Well, it's Matt Walsh in a bad wig as a DEI consultant, so probably. PG13. 101M. BROADWAY.

BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE. Jenna Ortega joins Winona Ryder, Catherine O'Hara and Michael Keaton in the resurrection of the creepy comedy classic. PG13. 104M. BROADWAY, MILL CREEK, MINOR.

CORALINE. The creepy, button-eyed kids' classic. PG. 100M. BROADWAY (3D).

DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE. Our old friends reluctantly team up to defeat a common enemy, with Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman. R. 132M. BROADWAY, MILL CREEK.

DESPICABLE ME 4. Gru (Steve Carell) and family return to fight evil-er with Gru Jr. in tow. PG. 94M. BROADWAY.

THE FRONT ROOM. Brandy Norwood and Andrew Burnap play an expecting couple into whose home a very wicked/demonic stepmother moves. R. 94M. MINOR.

GOD'S NOT DEAD: IN GOD WE TRUST. The franchise goes to Washington. 96M. BROADWAY.

THE KILLER'S GAME. An assassin (Dave Bautista) with a grim medical diagnosis may have ordered his own death too soon in this action-comedy. R. 104M. BROADWAY, MILL CREEK.

REAGAN. Dennis Quaid stars in a biopic that makes his breakup with Meg Ryan make more sense. PG13. 135M. BROADWAY.

SPEAK NO EVIL. James McAvoy as a scary dad reminds us why we don't vacation with families we don't know very well. R. 110M. BROADWAY, MILL CREEK.

For showtimes call: Broadway Cinema (707) 443-3456; Mill Creek Cinema 839-3456; Minor Theatre (707) 822-3456.