10 best movies like ‘Rebel Ridge,’ ranked
Stick it to the man.
Looking for a gritty action thriller about fighting “The Man”? This list has you covered.
Jeremy Saulnier’s Rebel Ridge turns its fists on small-town corruption. These films aim their blows in a similar direction, sometimes to connect with “The Man’s” jaw (i.e. the system), though other times they aim for a particular lower-case man instead.
10. Blue Ruin (2013)
Before directing Rebel Ridge, Jeremy Saulnier created the gritty revenge thriller Blue Ruin. The film revolves around a homeless recluse who lives out of his car in Delaware, scavenging for food and money where he can. The man soon discovers that a certain criminal is getting out of jail after 20 years, and our hero is none too pleased. After all, the guy was in there for murdering the protagonist’s parents, and now our boy has come to put his parents’ killer down for good.
9. Green Room (2015)
Another Jeremy Saulnier flick, Green Room is a horror movie about a concert that goes horribly, horribly wrong. A punk band on tour finds itself booked to play a Neo-Nazi bar by mistake. The band decides to stick it to their disreputable audience by playing “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” by Dead Kennedys. The bar’s patrons don’t take too kindly to the cover, and decide to voice their displeasure through brutal violence. The band holes up in the green room to fight back.
8. Hold the Dark (2018)
This Jeremy Saulnier film is set in the remote wilds of Alaska and concerns a wolf hunter contracted to help track down a missing child. He soon finds out there are more than just canines in the forest; the trees hide the type of monsters who would kidnap a kid, and they’re not entirely human.
7. Oldboy (2003)
Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy is an infamous thriller about a Korean salaryman who is kidnapped and imprisoned in a small room, only to be inexplicably released 15 years later. The man decides to get to the bottom of the mystery, specifically by smashing other men’s faces with a hammer who try to keep the reasons behind the kidnapping a secret.
6. Monkey Man (2024)
Directed by Dev Patel, Monkey Man is essentially John Wick with knives. Set in India, Patel plays an underground boxer who goes by the moniker Monkey Man. To take revenge against his mother’s killers, the Monkey Man infiltrates a brothel for the city’s elites and takes them all down with glorious, bloody aplomb. The best scene? Dev Patel, along with a group of hijra (a trans/nonbinary community in India) lay waste to the seedy penthouse of a nightclub.
5. John Wick (2014)
Directed by stuntman Chad Stahelski, John Wick is an action movie lover’s paradise. After the dickhead son of a Russian mob boss makes the poor decision to break into ex-assassin John Wick’s house and kill his dog, Wick decides to come out of retirement to take the entire Russian mob pay and pay in full. With stellar, neon-drenched fight sequences and brutal kills, this might just be the best action movie of the 21st Century.
4. Serpico (1973)
Sidney Lumet’s 1973 classic Serpico stars Al Pacino as Frank Serpico, the real-life cop who risked life and limb to battle against internalized corruption in the NYPD. If you’re looking for more man vs. police department action, Serpico serves as the blueprint with which films like Rebel Ridge were made.
3. First Blood (1982)
Before becoming mired in lesser sequels, Ted Kotcheff’s First Blood is the original story of the action movie legend John Rambo. A Vietnam veteran with a traumatic past, Rambo decides to seek a life of peace and quiet in a small town. Chaos and violence are what he finds instead. He soon runs afoul of the corrupt local police department and decides that the best way to deal with the long arm of the law is to put it in a cast.
2. Out of the Furnace (2013)
Scott Cooper’s Out of the Furnace stars Christian Bale as Russell Baze, a rust belt steelworker whose brother has gone missing. The cops are clueless, so Baze has to use the skills he learned in the armed forces to infiltrate the criminal underworld and bring his brother home. When I say “infiltrate” that sounds like I’m implying a stealthy operation, but no, Russel Baze goes in guns Bazing. Blazing. Whatever.
1. Sicario (2015)
Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario, alternatively titled “Fifty Shades of Morally Gray,” is a crime filler where the line between cop and criminal is as blurry as the bathroom mirror after a hot shower. An enigmatic government official recruits FBI Agent Kate Macer for a task force created to fight in the war on drugs. The team crosses the border into Mexico to take out a cartel kingpin, and sh*t hits the ethically dubious fan from there. It turns out that some of the team members have their own ideas on how to dish out justice, or rather, cold-blooded vengeance.
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