‘Rust’ Review: Alec Baldwin’s Controversy-Stained Western

In another timeline, Joel Souza’s Rust would come and go with mild fanfare and maybe some critical praise. The film follows a 13 year-old boy (Patrick Scott McDermott) who runs from the law — he’s been sentenced to death after accidentally shooting a local rancher — with his estranged grandfather (Alec Baldwin). It’s a no-frills Western, a classic story of cowboys and outlaws that revels in gorgeous scenery and the Puritanical moral dilemmas foundational to much of this nation’s mythology. 

But Rust is a more fraught cultural product. Four years ago, Baldwin, who co-wrote as well as produced the film, accidentally discharged a weapon he thought only had blanks. A live round was in the chamber, and the bullet fatally wounded cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and also hit Souza. What followed was a dramatic, closely reported story that revealed on-set negligence and raised questions about industry practices around gun safety. Baldwin was charged with involuntary manslaughter, but his case was dismissed after new evidence came to light that Baldwin’s lawyers alleged had been buried by the prosecutors. The film’s prop armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was also charged and is serving an 18-month prison sentence. 

Although Baldwin paid a settlement to Hutchins’ surviving family (and Matthew Hutchins, the widower, was made an executive producer on the project), the actor, not unfamiliar with controversy, found himself once again on the wrong side of public opinion. There was a gracelessness to the low-key blame game happening among the crew’s key players, and more information eventually came out about the culture on the production. Right before the shooting, the film’s first camera assistant had quit, citing, among other things, discomfort with how gunfights were played “very fast and loose.” 

Baldwin and Souza ended up finishing Rust, filming the remainder of the project with Bianca Cline (Marcel the Shell With Shoes On) as cinematographer. But the result is haunted by its history. The movie, which is dedicated to Hutchins, has thematic threads that eerily align with the contours of Baldwin’s case. The action in Rust is propelled by an accidental killing and its central moral dilemma concerns an infamous man trying to do the right thing. Baldwin’s performance is somber, weighted perhaps by the events on set. He plays Rust, the titular character and grandfather of the accused, as a recognizably tormented figure. 

We hear Rust before we see him. His metal spurs clank as he shuffles across the wooden floors of the jailhouse where his grandson, Lucas, is being held on charges of murder. Previous scenes revealed that after Lucas’ mother died, the boy carried on as best he could with his younger brother, Jacob (Easton Malcolm). They scrape by on favors from charitable neighbors in their small Wyoming settlement (it’s the 1880s) and live on the farm their parents left behind. 

After a local bully harasses Jacob, Lucas breaks the kid’s arms. That boy’s father, upset that he’s got one less farmhand, comes to ask Lucas to work for him. Lucas doesn’t mean to shoot the rancher. The young teen is trying to hunt a wolf that frequently hung around his farm. But, in a kind of fugue state, he misses — and murders a man. A judge finds him guilty and he’s sentenced to be hanged. The whole affair is tragic, and McDermott relays that sorrow in a committed performance. 

Lucas’ fear is palpable when Rust arrives to get him from jail. The circumstances around the elder figure’s arrival are murky, shrouded in a mystery only clarified later on. What we do know is that he’s come to take his grandson — whom he’s never been in touch with — to south of the border, where the law can’t touch him. Lucas is skeptical, but would prefer to be alive. With some trepidation, he rides away with Rust. 

The story of this fugitive pair runs parallel with two other narratives. The first concerns the sheriff, Wood Helm (Josh Hopkins), trying to catch them; the other, a fanatically religious bounty hunter, Fenton Lang (played with appropriate slipperiness by Travis Fimmel). Souza struggles to balance these three perspectives, which don’t always complement each other. Their themes — about justice, about religion in 19th-century America, about outlaws — compete for space and occasionally crowd the film.

While looking for Rust and Lucas, Wood contemplates the fate of his own son, who is afflicted by a potentially fatal disease. Souza’s screenplay and Hopkins’ performance gesture to some internal strife, but the stakes of that suffering aren’t nearly as clear as they should be. A similar issue plagues Fenton, whose reptilian personality and chilling obsession with religion suggest a story bigger than one Rust has room for. All three narratives consider a segment of America in the 19th century, when the young nation was drunk on the possibility of Westward expansion and committed to Manifest Destiny. But they don’t cohere as smoothly as they do in Clint Eastwood’s Westerns, for example. 

Rust feels more accomplished in other areas, like the cinematography and the coordination of the fight scenes. It’s not clear where Hutchins’ work ends and Cline’s begins, but the end result is harmonious and visually compelling. There are some impressive moments that play with shadows and silhouettes, and no shortage of dramatically staged gun battles. Beautiful landscape shots offer a sense of the scale of the American West, especially as Rust and Lucas navigate the rugged territory. Some representations, of the indigenous Americans, for example, border on painfully clichéd; others, like those of settlers in new terrain, are more inspired. 

And that’s ultimately what Rust needs a bit more of. The film is competently made and even absorbing at times, but there’s a workaday quality that slows its momentum. It’s a handsomely made project, but a story about such a complicated set of characters should make us feel more strongly, and Rust struggles to accomplish that.