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Despite Alec Baldwin’s name recognition, you may not have realised that the actor has spent much of the last decade in a straight-to-streaming stupor, headlining films with titles such as Kid Santa and Chick Fight. Rust, a dour, overlong western that’s available to rent and buy in the US from today, would have likely suffered a similar fate: a thumbnail you hover over on Prime Video or Roku, then forget about entirely. That was, though, until Baldwin accidentally killed a woman on the film’s set. And now everyone knows Rust.
Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was fatally wounded in 2021 when Baldwin fired a live bullet from a gun during rehearsals for a scene – the gun was supposed to only hold blanks. Rust is dedicated to Hutchins’ memory. She receives second billing after the film’s director Joel Souza, himself shot in the shoulder during the accident, and her work (roughly half of the film, the rest of it shot by Bianca Cline after Hutchins’ death) is the Rust’s only real saving grace. This is an incredibly good-looking movie, rich in shadow and texture, and a testament to the craft Hutchins brought to even the most unremarkable of projects.
But Rust, somewhat inevitably, is a miserable experience overall. It concerns a 13-year-old farmhand in 19th century Wyoming, who is sentenced to death for killing his abusive employer. Baldwin is the gruff Rust, the boy’s outlaw grandfather, who springs him from jail. Together they flee town, pursued by bounty hunters and lawmen. Most of the characters here are thinly drawn, while Souza – who also wrote the film’s script – struggles to harness tension or pockets of intrigue. Baldwin is a real mistake, his performance more ludicrous than menacing. In a post-30 Rock world, it is comfortably accepted that Baldwin is at his best in comedy and parts that hinge on his slick, chaotic machismo. Here, though, he is pouty and self-serious, and largely sinks the movie as soon as he turns up.
Still, that’s not the main story here. Rust was patched together in reshoots that occurred 18 months after Hutchins’ death, and at the behest of her family. It was for this reason that Souza agreed to return, but he has since expressed regret about setting the film in motion in the first place. You cannot fault Hutchins’ family for wanting her work to be seen, and certainly completed, but queasiness is unavoidable. There are numerous shots of Baldwin firing pistols (thankfully, the scene he was rehearsing with Hutchins was never properly shot), and unintentionally ghoulish dialogue about the dangers of guns.
What is meaningful, I suppose, is that you never once stop thinking about Hutchins while watching Rust, nor the shoddy work environment that led to her death (Rust’s prop armourer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed is currently serving an 18-month prison sentence for involuntary manslaughter, while an identical charge against Baldwin was dismissed; the film’s assistant director Dave Halls pleaded guilty to the charge of the negligent use of a deadly weapon). But this is a very hollow, very dark victory.
Dir: Joel Souza. Starring: Alec Baldwin, Patrick Scott McDermott, Travis Fimmel, Josh Hopkins, Frances Fisher. 139 mins.
‘Rust’ is available to rent and buy in the US, with a UK release to be determined
English (US) ·