movie review
RUST
Running time: 133 minutes. Not rated. In some theaters and on VOD Friday.
The wait is finally over… for a movie nobody was waiting for.
Nearly four years after a prop gun held by Alec Baldwin and mistakenly loaded with a live round went off and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on set, their movie “Rust” has hit theaters.
And how is the Western? Mediocre and often uncomfortable to watch; forever tainted by tragedy. Completing “Rust” and releasing it was a massive error of judgement.
Lesser films sometimes get shelved by studios for reasons of quality or other corporate drama. But an average picture that resulted in the death of a young mother will be available for everybody to view on Friday. That choice leaves a foul taste, even if the stated rationale is to showcase the woman’s work.
How can anybody love this movie?
Answer: They can’t.
The belated arrival of “Rust” is the strange culmination of a horrible, horrible story.
First there was the worldwide outpouring of grief when Hutchins died at age 42, leaving behind a little son and a windower. (Director Joel Souza was also shot, but recovered). Then came shock and years of ugly trials against Baldwin and armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, resulting in Baldwin being acquitted and Gutierrez-Reed getting 18 months behind bars.
Now that that press tour from hell is over, the film is here. Well, sort of. “Rust” is only showing on 100 screens around the country (in New York, just in upstate Wilton and Albany) and drops on VOD the same day.
The movie is definitely not worth a 3 1/2-hour drive, or the $14.99 at-home purchase price.
Baldwin, pale and grizzled, plays a notorious outlaw named Harlan Rust. Should you forget, his last name will be spoken over and over and over again.
Nearby cast-iron skillets will be shaking in fear.
Rust stomps in 25 minutes into the movie to spring a 13-year-old boy named Lucas (Patrick Scott McDermott) from the clink after the kid is wrongly accused of murder. That the story bears a resemblance to off-screen reality, is the first element of meta awkwardness.
The tragedy of Hutchins’ death overshadows anything that’s good about the film, sadly including her own grand cinematography. Unlike the colorful, cheeseball vision of the West in Kevin Costner’s “Horizon: An American Saga,” Hutchins’ depiction of mountains, saloons and forests is drained and sooty.
A cowboy hat, however, is a weird fit on Baldwin. While I bought him as a man haunted by the ghosts of his past, the actor as an 1880s criminal in Kansas is far too big a leap to take.
When he earnestly says, in a home-on-the-range brogue, lines like “What part of ‘stay put’ don’t ya savvy?!” and “my grandaddy,” it’s not unlike when his “30 Rock” character Jack Donaghee visited Stone Mountain, Georgia. The difference is, that was funny. This is a pitch-dark Western that wreaked real-life devastation.
Harlan and Lucas embark on a journey through the wilderness that’s perilous, but never to the point of excitement or anticipation. It reminded me of the somewhat better Tom Hanks movie “News of the World.” Old frontiersman, kid and campfires. Spoiler: At first they duo dislikes each other, but later they like each other a lot. Imagine that.
Even though the scene in which Hutchins died offscreen has been cut — for those keeping score, there’s one good decision — whenever Baldwin starts shooting at some rogues, like the bounty hunter who’s chasing the pair, the viewer is ripped out of the action. There is a lot of gunfire, and now we know none of it was truly safe.
We experience Baldwin shooting the gun — not Rust.
“I wish I’d never written that damn movie,” Souza recently told the Guardian.
I bet. But nobody forced Souza and Baldwin to finish it.
