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.

 

Keeping Faith: Yes, a Real Keeper

The wife and I quickly binged the first two seasons of Keeping Faith, billed on Acorn by way of Amazon Prime Video as a Welsh thriller but just as much a powerfully effective family drama. We loved it.

The Faith in question is played by Eve Miles, last seen here just a few weeks ago as Lola in We Hunt Together.   She was appealingly effective in both roles, but Keeping Faith called for a wider array of emotions, which Miles delivered on beautifully and memorably.

Faith's a lawyer whose husband, also a lawyer, disappears.   Is he dead or missing, and, in either case, why?  The action in the first season all takes place in a week, replete with a clocking calendar giving us the day and whether it was AM or PM, making Keeping Faith a sort expanded version of 24, without a Jack Bauer.

That's because Faith is not only bright, articulate, and tough when she needs to be, but also very vulnerable, and especially when she needs to nurture her kids, a boy baby, a little girl, and an older girl approaching teenhood.  And these family scenes and interactions are where not only Faith the character but Keeping Faith the series show their mettle.  It's a heartache and a pleasure to see what this family goes through in just a week.  The older daughter Alys has the biggest role in this, and here's a tip of the hat to Demi Letherby for doing a fine job in this.

Beyond the family, Hannah Daniel as Cerys who is Faith's partner in the law firm and Aneirin Hughes as Tom, Faith's father-in-law and semi-retired lawyer in the firm, are vivid and well-played characters.  There are criminals that the police are after, and who are themselves police, and of course someone who was and may or may not still be a criminal whom Faith comes to rely upon and even more.

But I'll say no more about the plot, lest I give something crucial away, so just watch and enjoy.

 

We Hunt Together 1.6: The Sacrifice

I thought the finale to We Hunt Together's short six-episode first season, on Showtime last night, was just right:  meaning, all four central characters ended up just where they best, or most appropriately, belonged.

Let's start with the killers.  Freddy has been on the top of the game all along.  Even that, though, didn't guarantee her a ticket out of the situation she and Baba found themselves in: in a house surrounded by police, most of whom wanted to go in blasting.   Fortunately, Baba had a solution.  And Freddy had the smarts to play it to the hilt.

As for Baba, it was becoming increasingly clear that there was nowhere in this world he now fit.  He loved Freddie, and was willing to kill for her, but he hated doing that.  What better way than to sacrifice himself, and in that one fell swoop atone for his sins and give Freddie a way out.

Jackson was at his best trying to talk Baba into surrendering.  Even though that conversation failed, Jackson's sense of self, already strong, got even sharper.  He'll be an even more effective detective in the second season, which I certainly hope there is.

Lola's trajectory in the finale was the most complex, but also the most rewarding.  She was furious that Freddy was getting away with it.   But she applied that fury and came up with evidence that shows, at least to her and Jackson, that Freddie was involved in the murders.   A good lesson there: fury can be a powerful asset, if it's logically applied.

So ... I really enjoyed this short series, and would welcome another season, with more of Jackson and Lola, and maybe Freddy (though another case would be fun, too).

See also We Hunt Together 1.1: Compelling Pairs ... We Hunt Together 1.2: Upping the Game ... We Hunt Together 1.3: Fine Tuning ... We Hunt Together 1.4: No Murder, But ... We Hunt Together 1.5: Short and Deadly

 

We Hunt Together 1.5: Short and Deadly

We learned two very important things about Freddy in We Hunt Together 1.5:

1.  Nothing the teacher did at that school turned her into a murderer when Freddy was still Lily.  Instead, Lily was already a murderer, or at least became a murderer, when she killed the original Freddy, who, it turns out, didn't commit suicide.

2. Freddy doesn't need Baba to do her killings.   Maybe she needed him at the beginning of the story, but not any more. She takes matters into her own hands when Baba objects to killing the teacher, and kills him herself.

This might mean, if the series were continuing beyond the next and final episode of this season, that Freddy might leave Baba, or even kill him, to cover her tracks, because she no longer needs him to do her dirty work.  On the hand, maybe she truly loves him, and would want to be with him in any case.  Who knows?   And the point is we'll likely never know, because next week is the season finale.

Which is too bad.  We hardly learned anything about Jackson and Lola in episode 1.5, except Jackson got pretty angry with his wife, and cursed her out on the phone.  Why?  Because he's falling in love with Lola?  I doubt we'll get the answer to that, either, next week.

Which makes me wonder what we will find out next week?  That Freddy and Baba get apprehended?  I don't know,  I can't quite see that happening, either.  Which is testament to how good and different We Hunt Together is, which speaks to the reason for another season, which is what I've been saying in these last few paragraphs.

See you here next week.

 See also We Hunt Together 1.1: Compelling Pairs ... We Hunt Together 1.2: Upping the Game ... We Hunt Together 1.3: Fine Tuning ... We Hunt Together 1.4: No Murder, But ... 

 

We Hunt Together 1.4: No Murder, But ...

There was no murder in We Hunt Together 1.4.  But the build-up to it made for an outstanding episode, since it unveiled and moved forward lots of crucial things.

For instance, Jackson's wife is having an affair and Jackson knows about it.  This is revealed after Jackson substitutes his own specimen for Lola's, so she can pass a drug test (good thing they don't test for DNA and gender in those kinds of tests).  And this in turn occurs after we learn why Lola is a druggie: it's to bury guilt she feels for killing a mother and daughter in an auto accident on a "roundabout" - an accident that as Jackson points out was a really an accident and not so much Lola's fault.  All of that is quite a powerful packet of information.

Meanwhile, we learn an equivalent amount about Freddy.  Her real name is Lily, and she took the name Freddy because the real Freddy, Lily's best friend, took her life, after a music teacher - whom Lily (our Freddy) later pushed down the stairs - did something inappropriate (as in sexual) to the original, real Freddy.

All of this is important because Freddy (originally Lily) has brought Babu back to her school, to meet the music teacher, now in a wheelchair, because Freddy wants Babu to kill the music teacher.  This is a good thing - not ethically but plot-wise - because Jackson and Lola may well need another murder to keep their investigation going.   Bad luck and Lola going for a swig of drug got in the way of Lola seeing Freddy and Babu together, which would have cracked the case wide open right there.

See what I mean about this being one fine episode even without a murder?  Back with another review next week.

See also We Hunt Together 1.1: Compelling Pairs ... We Hunt Together 1.2: Upping the Game ... We Hunt Together 1.3: Fine Tuning

 

We Hunt Together 1.3: Fine Tuning

We learned a lot about our major quarter of characters in We Hunt Together 1.3 on Showtime last night.

Baba doesn't like to kill.  In fact, he wants to recapture some of the small boy that he was in Africa, before being a child soldier claimed his body and a lot of his soul, and turned in him into a killer.  Freddy says she wants to help him in that quest, but of course she lies about just about everything.

Indeed, she wants Baba to do her killing.   Significantly, she doesn't follow through on her threat to kill the captive, leaving him instead for Baba to dispatch.  But she isn't angry about Baba when she discovers he let the captive go, because he wound up dead, anyway, the result of jumping out of nowhere onto a highway in the path of a speeding vehicle.  Does that tell her that God is on their side?  Possibly, though I doubt that Freddy much believes in any deity other than her own rapacious sense of self.

Meanwhile, Jackson is coming forth as a very likeable character.   His easy smile and laugh and overall manner are an excellent invitation to take his razor-sharp logic to heart.  Further, though he talks a good case for boundaries, he's on the clock almost 24 hours a day on this case, more than Lola, whose intensity and appetite for hard work is muted into unconsciousness brought on by the drug she takes at night.

Jackson's wife, though, sees how much he enjoys working with Lola, and would like to meet her.  Jackson so far seems like a straight arrow, but it strikes me that anything is possible in this unfolding story.  Jackson's ethics would almost no doubt enable him to resist of any of Freddy's flirtations, but what if he found himself alone with Lola on a long night, and she was in need of some sort of comforting.

At this point, she remains the most difficult character to categorize.  Flawed for sure, but not in a way that seems to compromise her reasoning powers as detective.  She's a fine match for Freddy, who isn't flawed at all - unless you consider being a psycho killer, along the lines Villanelle in Killing Eve, who also combines nonchalant humor and murder to a tee, to be a flaw.

See you back here next week.  I do wish We Hunt Together was streaming rather than being doled out on a weekly basis.  But I'll take it.

See also We Hunt Together 1.1: Compelling Pairs ... We Hunt Together 1.2: Upping the Game 

 

We Hunt Together 1.2: Upping the Game

A belated review of We Hunt Together 1.2, which really upped its game.

First, the killing team of Freddy and Baba got another two murders under their belts - or, in at least one case, up hanging from a tree - which is a lot more than the usual one you'd expect from serial killers in a single episode.  And our detective team of Jackson and Lola seem even smarter than in the first episode, or at least Jackson did.  Lola is revealed as a druggie, which may compromise her work (or maybe not, if we believe what Freud said about at least one drug in his Cocaine Papers).

But the point is that these two teams are pretty evenly matched in terms of wits, verve, and how they support and energize each other.  Which means we should be in for a good chess match in this series.

Significantly, the good guys at this point are pretty far along in realizing who the bad guys are.  The question, then, is what Freddy and Baba will do to evade being put out of business by the police.  Their formula, developed tonight, of killing someone to make him look the suspect, won't be able to last much longer - Lola's already on to them.

So what will they do?   Both killers think pretty well on their feet, and Freddy in her own way is a master strategist.  I predict that the narrative will soon take a dangerous turn, as either Jackson or Lola or both become hunted by Freddy and Baba.   I'll be back here tomorrow night, when the third episode is on, to tell you how this hunter and prey switching roles works out, assuming that's what happens.

 

We Hunt Together 1.1: Compelling Pairs

 

A different kind of detective show, just on Showtime: We Hunt Together.

How is it different?  British - well, there are lots of those.  Somewhat unusual format: About equal time to the build-up to a murder, that happens three days before the detectives begin to investigate.  That's interesting, but not enough to make We Hunt Together compelling.

Here's what does: the characters, who come in pairs, a man and a woman, who do the murder, and a man and woman who investigate.  In both cases, the men are black.   In the case of the killers, he's seeking some sort of refugee status in the UK, from Africa.  He has both a gentleness and a violent streak.  His partner in crime is a blonde, who works as a telephone sex operator, in at least one of her jobs.  As for the detectives, the guy is gentle, too.  His partner, the woman, is something of a hard-ass, or at least more seasoned in homicide investigations.  He, by the way, is her boss, That, to me, is an interesting set of characters, who have a shot at being compelling.

The ambience is evocative, too - gritty, smoky, boozy, druggy.  Someone who sounds like Amy Winehouse (and for all I know, is) sings "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" as the murderers dance, and the song plays under (or is it over?) the closing credits.   One of the best applications I've heard of that Goffin and King masterpiece.

So I'm in - at least to the extent that I'd watch the next episode of We Hunt Together tomorrow, but I'll settle for next week, and tell you sooner or later if I love it.

See also We Hunt Together 1.2: Upping the Game ... We Hunt Together 1.3: Fine Tuning