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 be filled with 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 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.
