Adapted from the eponymous novel by Philip Meyer, American Rust is about America’s downgrading with a four-star cast to back it up.
What is it about ?
The rise of criminology in a small town in Pennsylvania, seen through the eyes of its sheriff, Del Harris.
American Rust, a series created by Dan Futterman with Jeff Daniels, Maura Tierney, David Alvarez, Alex Neustaedter, Mark Pellegrino…
An atmosphere close to Mare of Easttown
This is what strikes you from the first minutes: this family resemblance with Mare of Easttown – the excellent mini-series broadcast last April on OCS in France. American Rust shares some disturbing commonalities with the series worn by Kate Winslet.
The main character is a police chief, played by Jeff Daniels. A man who is not very helpful because he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder since his return from the Iraq war, but deeply human. His personal life is chaotic: he tries to wean himself from the heavy treatment he has been taking for years.
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He watches over a small town in Pennsylvania that is part of the Rust Belt, or “rust belt”, the nickname given to this industrial region in the northeastern United States. And like the city of Easttown, it is a forgotten area where poverty thrives.
And like Mare, Del Harris is faced with an affair that touches him closely. It involves Billy (Alex Neustaedter), a young man who had a great career in football up front but who stopped everything. The problem for Del is that Billy is possibly the perpetrator of a murder but he’s also the son of Grace (Maura Tierney), the woman he’s in love with …
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Del is then faced with a real dilemma: he is torn between his ethics as a police officer and his feelings for Grace. A moral choice that reminds us of another recent series… Your Honor, with Bryan Cranston in the role of a judge who sits on his principles to save his son who caused the death of a young man, son of a godfather of the mafia.
American Rust suffers from the echoes that lag behind it, recalling successful series such as Mare of Easttown and Your Honor. However, she has one major trump card. Its cast. Jeff Daniels and Maura Tierney are great for carrying a speechless speech. Their looks and the exhaustion that can be detected in them alone express the weight of an America worn out by dint of making three-eight for a pittance.
A series that completes the picture of disenchanted America.
