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Saturday, January 2, 2021

Rust Creek: Not Rusty or Creeky

We saw Rust Creek, a 2018 movie, on Netflix last night.  Neither rusty nor creeky, and in fact a quite good rendition of the well worn theme of a young woman drives off the road in some backwoods area, and is accosted by guys ranging from criminals to miscreants.

The first thing I liked about Rust Creek is the reason Sawyer (the young woman) winds up off the road: a lame GPS system that directs her to a closed road, and then provides no coherent way of getting back to the highway.  How many times has that happened to you, right?

The miscreants, who are meth dealers, are no great shakes in originality, but the cook -- the guy who makes the meth -- turns out to be a decent, likeable, highly intelligent and reliable character.  In his own way, he turns out to be the hero of the story.

The anti-hero is a local sheriff, genial and ... deadly.   He's actually running the meth show, and the ease with which he kills anyone who gets in his way provides some surprises in the narrative.  I realized, as I was watching this movie, that Sheriff O'Doyle could have been a template for Big Rick, the genial sheriff in Big Sky who will also kill anyone he perceives as a danger to his illicit business.  (I have no idea who in the making of Big Sky saw what in Rust Creek, but I'm just saying the two characters seem cut from the same cloth.)

So, all in all, Rust Creek is an enjoyable movie, well directed by Jen McGowan, with good acting by Hermione Corfield (who was also good as the villain in We Hunt Together) as Sawyer and Jay Paulson as meth-cook Lowell and Sean O'Bryan as O'Doyle, and good writing by Julie Lipson and Stu Pollard.  I say see it.

 

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