I don’t think I’ve ever been so conflicted before watching a film as I was heading into Rebel Ridge. My internal dialogue resembled a fierce tennis volley. ‘It’s the new film from Jeremy Saulnier! Woohoo! It’s about an ex-Marine—groan. It’s about how he takes on a bunch of crooked small-town cops and shows them that they messed with the wrong guy—alright, sounds great! It’s a Netflix release—groan.’ The Simpsons cursed frozen yogurt comparisons write themselves.

I’m happy to report that the forces of evil were vanquished in that furious tug-of-war: Rebel Ridge mostly lives up to the level of quality that we’ve come to expect from writer-director Saulnier, and it does so while side-stepping the majority of the rah-rah American jingoism that usually comes with stories that focus on ex-military personnel. It does sometimes feel like a film of two halves, in which the second seems as if it won’t be able to match the intensity of the first, but Saulnier manages to bring things to boil again before the movie’s 131 minutes are up.

I can’t mention intensity without highlighting the fact that Rebel Ridge features one of the most electrifying, instantly gripping, and cinema-seat (well, if it wasn’t a Netflix release)-destroying openings in recent memory. Our protagonist is riding down a quiet, small-town road on his bicycle with headphones in when a police cruiser appears behind him, and, almost instantly, without warning, rams into him, propelling him face-first into the concrete. Before he even has time to mentally or physically process what has happened to him, the jackboot of America’s institutional racism is upon him, and the bureaucratic thuggery that minoritised communities—and especially Black males—face in the United States, manifested here in the practice of civil asset forfeiture, follows.

When it comes to incendiary openings, it’s not quite Athena, but it’s not far off. Saulnier is no stranger to unbearable tension and horrifying release, after all. As anyone who has seen one of the best films of the 21st century would attest, he is a modern master of it. François Truffaut famously once said that the very nature of cinema, with its focus on entertainment and heroic imagery, means that there can be no such thing as a truly ‘anti-war’ film. That’s a debate for another time, but a similar sentiment can be extended to other ‘heavy’ social issues like systemic racism and misogynistic violence. Where does righteous agitprop end and exploitation begin? Rebel Ridge manages to avoid this thorny boundary by not leaning too heavily on shocking imagery; rather, there is a constant and unyielding institutional and personal threat that hangs over proceedings, and the film is more effective for it.

That’s not to say that things don’t boil over and explode. This is a Rambo riff, after all, and so they must. They do so in less gruesome ways than in some previous Saulnier projects, but there is a visceral satisfaction in seeing our hero turn the tables on the racist police force (apologies for the tautology). And ‘hero’ really is the right term here, as English actor Aaron Pierre (The Underground Railroad) puts in a powerful and mesmerizing performance, with a mixture of controlled violence and vulnerable sentimentality that proves a compelling combination. Rebel Ridge was originally scheduled to star John Boyega before various issues led to Pierre taking on the role. While Boyega would surely have performed excellently, Pierre has more than made the movie his own. He is a star here. Saulnier’s action staging and Pierre’s movements belong together.

The film is not without its flaws. There is a slight lag in the middle—necessary in some ways for its plot and for the rhythm being generated, but it doesn’t quite work as well as it should. I also can’t help but think what it would all look like had it been shot with film instead of digital. Or indeed, if more time had been spent on post-production, a richer color palette and sharper contrasts would have boosted some of the atmosphere onscreen. These are relatively minor quibbles, however, as Rebel Ridge is one of the finest action thrillers of the last few years, and you should watch it immediately if that’s what you’re craving.

Also, it opens with Iron Maiden’s ‘The Number of the Beast’ blasting out, and you can’t really open a film with anything better than that.