‘Rebel Ridge’: The movie Stephen King called the thinking man’s ‘Rambo’
No living author has had more of their books adapted into movies than Stephen King. In fact, it’s not even close. Where King’s adaptations sit somewhere in the 50s (and counting), the next living authors on the list, JK Rowling, John Grisham, and Nicholas Sparks, only have 11 each.
His stories are practically begging to be adapted to the screen. There’s the horror element, of course, which is a money-making genre, but his work is also full of sympathetic and believable characters who find themselves in terrible circumstances. Whether it’s a teenage girl facing abuse at home and at school or a grieving family yearning to bring back a deceased loved one, he blends the fantastical with the universal, which is ripe fodder for a great movie.
Given his penchant for writing stories that leap off the page, King knows what he’s talking about when it comes to good storytelling. Recently, he shared his glowing assessment of a recent release with his followers on X (formerly known as Twitter). “Rebel Ridge: If this is a Netflix original, it’s one of the best. A thinking man’s Rambo. No diss to David Morrell.”
Starring Aaron Pierre, the movie follows a former marine who is caught up on the wrong side of small-town corruption when police seize the money he had saved to post bail for his cousin. Like Rambo, Pierre’s character is a veteran who wants to stay out of trouble but is unwilling to walk away from injustice and is physically equipped to spill as much blood as it takes to exact revenge.
Rebel Ridge became an overnight hit for the streaming platform, racking up over 31 million views in less than a week. It follows a long line of vigilante movies in addition to Sylvester Stallone’s classic stint as Rambo, most recently with the John Wick franchise. It is also notable for its creator, Jeremy Saulnier, whose previous offerings, such as Green Room and Hold the Dark, are characterised by punishing levels of violence and gore.
In contrast, Rebel Ridge is, fittingly enough, more akin to something Stephen King himself might create. There are surprisingly few deaths, and the plot, though ostensibly about vengeance, centres around a small town full of compelling characters. It even draws attention to a little-known law called civil asset forfeiture, in which cops are able to confiscate property from a person they merely suspect of illegal activity, making it something of a political commentary in a way that the John Wick and Rambo films steer clear of.
For Saulnier, the change in tone from his previous work was intentional. For one thing, he wrote it in response to some relatively mundane gripes. “I was definitely tapping into the frustration that we all go through with just living life in modern society,” he said in an interview, pointing to everything from customer service calls to the changing film industry. “You’re trying to behave, you’re trying to stay within the guardrails, and you’re thwarted by bureaucracy, and it’s just so stifling.”
He also revealed that he wasn’t simply making a one-off digression from the usual gruesome bleakness of his work but potentially changing his style altogether. “I just needed a bit of a lift,” he explained. “I really dig, and I’m fully at peace and have embraced my filmography. But a lot of my films are gut punches.”
While fans of darker material revere his previous work, there’s no denying that his turn toward more human-based, vaguely hopeful movies has struck a chord with a broader audience.
