Rust

***An aged outlaw (Alec Baldwin) helps a boy heading toward the gallows***

This flick is infamous for the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins due to live ammunition inexplicably being in Baldwin’s prop gun, which resulted in the armorer serving 15 months in prison before paroled. In the 1½ years it took to restart shooting, Brady Noon had to be replaced as Lucas Hollister by Patrick Scott McDermott. Disregarding all of this, is it worth watching?

It’s an artistic slow-burn Western with excellent locations, developed characters, an effective sense of grim realism, and spurts of expected violence. Josh Hopkins stands out as the marshal sent to apprehend the fugitives, a man struggling with his son’s lethal illness and everything that goes with it. Travis Fimmel is also notable as bounty hunter “Preacher” Lang, who functions with the vestige of biblical faith, but has long since been compromised. Meanwhile Frances Fisher and Aria Alpert Adjani are on hand in small roles on the feminine front.

At its core, “Rust” subtlety explores what King Solomon lamented as the “heavy burden God has laid on humanity” in Ecclesiastes 1:13. Think about it, there are two general views of existence: (1) That life and the Universe are one big meaningless accident and you're just an insignificant bug that will soon be squashed out of existence and memory; or (2) that there’s an intelligent design to creation and, although it's somehow “fallen,” there IS meaning, love, hope and purpose, even if we are presently unable to fully comprehend it. The movie evades a concrete answer, but there’s a touch of agape love and the corresponding redemption.

Halyna Hutchins is fittingly honored in the end credits.   

It runs 2h 19m and was shot in Oct 2021 southwest of Santa Fe in northern New Mexico at Bonanza Creek Ranch and completed Apr-May 2023 at Yellowstone Film Ranch in southwest Montana.

GRADE: B+