Corbin Bernsen hit one out of the park with his “written, directed and produced” by movie ‘Rust’. Sure I have an affinity for the small budget indie movie, and for good reason. Having come from a small town on the northern plains, I know what one looks like in the winter time. It doesn’t look like one of those Hallmark Channel ‘Winter Holiday’ movies, with fake snow, fake people, fake buildings and fake towns. This movie screamed real. It was set in Kipling, Saskatchewan, it doesn’t get anymore real than that.

Bernsen plays a preacher who upon losing his faith returns to the comfort of his hometown decades later. The pickup he drives is a real GM 1500. The houses are real houses not palatial mansions. The people have the lumps and bumps we all have, not the look of people that could have just sprung off the pages of a glossy magazine. They used mostly folks from Kipling itself. It reminded me a lot of what they did with local talent in Winter’s Bone, an exceptional movie.

There’s a scene where Bernson is talking to his mentor in the living room late on a winter afternoon. They used just window light to caress each man’s face and bring out the character in each. Hollywood never would have done that. Low winter sun is beyond them. Sure the scene with the volleyball coach is a little stiff using an amateur. Sure his “sister” was not a professional, but it worked. And like his “dad” worked really well. So take that Hollywood.

I’ll take a low budget indie anytime over what Hollywood puts out. And as much as I enjoy the cheesy goodness of a winter Hallmark movie, after awhile the lack of any snow melting on an obviously 70 degree day it becomes painfully obvious they’re on a synthetic lot, and not really in Hometown, Ohio.