A small town deputy sheriff finds her police department under siege when
her son gets involved with a drug cartel.
Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Will Gilbey
Starring: Nikki Amuka-Bird, Zack Morris, Chris Reilly, Michael Socha, Solly McLeod, Simon Kunz
It's no longer unusual to find middle-aged actresses occupying the lead
roles in action movies. But just as Tom Cruise isn't playing a
fiftysomething in any relatable sense in the
Mission: Impossible
movies, neither are Kate Beckinsale, Jennifer Lopez, Milla Jovovich or Olga
Kurylenko playing their ages in their action movies. Most of the characters
they play could be swapped out for twentysomethings and there would be no
discernible difference. Jericho Ridge stands out in that not
only does it star an actress in her late forties - Nikki Amuka-Bird -
but she's playing a relatable middle-aged woman, one who doesn't boast
bulging biceps or possess martial arts skills, one who has to deal with the
worry of raising a teenage son on top of her demanding job.
Amuka-Bird plays Tabby, a small town deputy sheriff who returns to her job
for the first time after being involved in a car crash that has left her
hobbling with the aid of a crutch. Tabby picked a hell of a time to return
to her job: two nights previous a local meth dealer was executed with a
bullet to the back of his head, while the following night the station was
broken into and a couple of pistols stolen from the storage room. Thanks to
her physical condition, Tabby is assigned the duty of manning the station
while her macho male colleagues head out to follow a tip-off that a local
doomsday prepper may have been involved in the break-in.
It all starts off relatively quiet, with Tabby fending off complaints about
teenagers partying in the woods, but then she hears rumours of her teenage
son (Zack Morris) dealing drugs at the same party. As if that wasn't
stressful enough, it turns out the locksmith who showed up to repair the
station's doors isn't really a tradesman at all: he's there to find whatever
the previous burglar failed to uncover. Surprised by Tabby, the stranger
flees, only to soon return with another man and a variety of high powered
weapons. With nothing to defend herself with but a pistol fitted with the
wrong sized bullets (making it a potential hand grenade), Tabby is forced to
defend the station until the state police arrive, but they're a full 30
minutes away!
Writer/director Will Gilbey impresses in his directorial debut with
some economical filmmaking that is never showy but always gets the point
across clearly. He takes the time to lay out the geography of his single
location early on, which pays dividends later when the siege begins as it
means we're fully aware of how exposed Tabby is from attacks on various
fronts. It's simple, logical storytelling, but we don't always get such a
thing, particularly in the realm of low budget action movies.
The likes of John Carpenter and Walter Hill are clearly an influence here,
particularly Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13, itself heavily inspired by Howard Hawks' siege western
Rio Bravo. There's even a jailed meth-head named Macready (presumably named after
Kurt Russell's protagonist from Carpenter's The Thing) thrown into the mix. Unlike the prisoners of
Assault however, who ally themselves with the law to survive
the night, this Macready (Michael Socha) can't be trusted, which adds
an extra layer of threat for Tabby to deal with.
Like a Hawks' movie, the action comes in brief bursts, and Gilbey makes
great use of the striking image of illuminated tracer fire slicing through
the night air. There's also clever use of the dashcams on police cars, which
opens up the action without leaving the station, as Tabby observes her
colleagues remotely through her PC screen. But perhaps what's most
impressive about Jericho Ridge is how it never causes us to
question its American setting despite being filmed in Kosovo with an
entirely British cast.
Most crucially, we're given a heroine we care about, one with vulnerability
and human flaws, which makes her far more relatable than the usual action
heroines, who tend to be little more than gender-swapped versions of the
indestructible heroes traditionally played by musclebound men. Tabby is
fuelled not just by her own survival, but by a mother's instinct to protect
her son. Amuka-Bird is excellent as a woman at a low ebb forced to call on
her wits to take down a physically superior and heavily armed foe. There are
none of the usual eye-rolling moments where a 5'2" woman unfeasibly beats up
a 6'6" male opponent (usually by strangling him between her thighs) here.
Rather it's Tabby's ingenuity that gives her an edge. Horror filmmakers have
understood this dynamic for decades, but it seems the action genre is only
now catching up.
Ironically, prior to making his directorial debut, Gilbey was known for
writing screenplays for the Rise of the Footsoldier franchise
and various other geezer gangster flicks, the very definition of lads' night
in movies. With Jericho Ridge however he's made an action
movie that will appeal just as much to a female audience as to the typical
bloke seeking something heavy on gun play to watch while he polishes off a
post-pub curry on a Friday night (not to stereotype or anything). I have to
confess I'm not a fan of modern action movies for the very reason that I
struggle to care about heroes who are physically capable of beating any
opponent (it's why superhero movies continually fail to engage me), but if
we get more heroes in the broken mould of Amuka-Bird's Tabby, I just might
be enticed back to the genre.
