Rebel Ridge

 Iron Maiden kicks off writer/director/editor Jeremy Saulnier's long-delayed Rebel Ridge, the rising harmony carefully timed so that the title card coincides with Bruce Dickinson's iconic scream.

 The music is revealed to come from a man's headphones as he rides down a country road on his bike. He can't hear the police chasing him, and they elect to end the pursuit by running him off the road. It's an immediately tense situation, one that's complicated by the fact that it's two armed, white cops standing over a downed black man (Aaron Pierre).

  The police shake the man - Terry - down at gunpoint, and seize a sizeable amount of cash he was carrying in a carrier bag to make bail for his cousin over at town hall; A 'lawful' seizure, as they make up a spurious claim to have reasonable suspicion that it's drug money.

 By the time the police head out leaving a quietly enraged - and conspicuously not shaken - Terry behind to pick up the pieces, the Iron Maiden song has long ended. It's been replaced by the much harsher riff of March of the S.O.D., promising things are going to get a lot darker.

 Once Terry makes it to town hall Summer, a sympathetic clerk (Anna Sophia Robb), takes pity on him and explains that he's likely never going to see his money again; The seizure, while unethical, seems to be fully legal. Terry starts making alternate arrangements - he fears his cousin will not last long in jail - but those plans also fall through. The situation escalates once Terry has a series of confrontations with the township's crooked chief of police (Don Johnson)... until things tip over to violence despite Terry's best efforts to keep them from boiling over.

 From there it's Summer and Terry reluctantly going up against a complex but credible conspiracy involving all levels of law enforcement in town, an unholy but completely coherent mixture between action, paranoid '70s political thrillers, real-life systematic injustice and social drama. One that never neglects a single one of its threads, backed by the best, most badass script I've seen in years: detail-oriented but lean as all hell, one that carefully grounds each and every one of its elements, and that gives us to everything we need to put things together without ever devolving into exposition dumps.

 It's got a palpable, entirely justified sense of moral rage fuelling it - one small detail, a $9k margarita machine bought with seized police money - was popularized by a real-life case featured in a John Oliver show about police corruption; You can tell a lot of research went into the making of this, and I wouldn't be surprised if many other plot points are also ripped from the headlines.

 But while circumstances give Terry every excuse to paint the town red all over, he's no Rambo; he's a true pacifist, ever looking for ways to de-escalate situations even when he's willingly stirring shit up. He's backed up by the film, which doesn't excuse anyone involved in its central conspiracy, but complicates things by humanizing almost every character and hinting at how things got to be that way. Seriously - the script in this thing... it's a fucking marvel.

 Some people might balk at the protagonist's superhuman morality and his preternatural ability to keep cool under fire - and I can sympathize a little with that; He's an action hero dropped in a much grittier mix of genres. But as an action lover and a fan of all things awesome that criticism won't ever hold any water with me. As for those annoyed by the politics of the film... well, fuck them.

 In any fair world, this would be a star-making turn for Pierre; he sells his veteran protagonist with ease, exuding charisma, moral fortitude and both physical and mental menace. Robb is also great, and so is Johnson and a host of dependable character actors, all well served with meaty, complex roles. 

 Saulnier's filming is, as ever, top-notch. His style is unshowy but crisply shot and carefully staged; At several points I found myself thinking "wait, that whole thing was an unbroken take!". The action is brilliantly choreographed; Mostly gritty and naturalistic, but full of cool moves (mostly jujitsu) and vehicular mayhem, all clearly captured. There's surprisingly little of it and, pointedly, very little of the ultraviolence of Saulnier's past films. 

 This is, by far, the best new movie I've seen in a very, very long time - and I don't say this lightly in face of a year that's had two outstanding Mad Max and Dune movies. My only complaint is that its Netflix origins robbed us of the chance to see it on a big screen, and more people the chance of even finding out it even exists (it's been dumped alongside all their other usual shit with minimal fanfare).