Review: Unavoidably haunted by on-set tragedy, ‘Rust’ finally arrives, loaded with guilt

Ideally, we like to watch movies in a state of willful ignorance regarding their making, even if the whole machinery of selling and promoting a movie seems to defy that. But taking in the western “Rust” is a different matter. It’s the film on which up-and-coming cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was accidentally killed by a live round in a prop gun meant to hold blanks, discharged during a rehearsal by its star, Alec Baldwin. Writer-director Josh Souza was also wounded by the bullet.

That terrible and avoidable incident is a context that no movie should have to bear, even if the thematic matter of “Rust” — violence’s aftermath, atonement’s hard road and, yes, loaded guns in the wrong hands — makes this cursed production’s release, three and a half years after Hutchins’ death, feel more like a solemn performance at a wake than a work to be accepted on its own terms.

Anybody who might have assumed that “Rust” was some fly-by-night exploitation flick should know that its bones are very much that of a moody indie with a heart and a conscience. Death and tragedy are through lines meant to haunt a viewer. Justice is sought after, but is also portrayed as inadequate and hardly the last word. Guns are plentiful but for the most part, their unholstering and firing carries proper weight. In fact, Clint Eastwood’s masterpiece of reckoning “Unforgiven” feels like a tonal lodestar to “Rust,” itself far from a glib, flashy shoot-em-up.

Before Baldwin even appears as a grizzled outlaw with a mission of mercy, “Rust” sets itself up — uncannily, it must be said — as a woeful story about an unintended shooting death. When trying to scare off a wolf, orphaned Wyoming farm boy Lucas (Patrick Scott McDermott) mistakenly kills a local rancher with his family’s prized Henry rifle, a weapon we can tell he’s been reluctant to use. He’s arrested, thrown in jail, then sentenced to the gallows.

Bloody escape comes in the form of murdering thief Harland Rust (Baldwin), the grandfather Lucas never knew he had. Their destination is Mexico, but they’ve got pursuers in the form of a posse led by a steadfast, morosely philosophical U.S. Marshal played by a solid Josh Hopkins and, separately, a creepy Bible-quoting bounty hunter (Travis Fimmel, a tad overcooked).

Frontier characters with colorful language come and go in spurts of saloon musing and fireside dialogue. “Rust” talks a good game about the brutality and despair that are readily called up when living is hard. But the central relationship between Baldwin’s veteran killer and McDermott’s scarred innocent never quite gels into meaningful cross-generational intimacy, and the chase around them feels meandering. In its well-worn trail of hunter and hunted, damned and doomed, “Rust” struggles to warrant its two-hours-plus running time. (If only the storytelling economy of Anthony Mann or Budd Boetticher were other genre inspirations.)

“A man makes his choices,” Baldwin’s crusty, guilt-ridden drifter says to his grandkid at one point. It bears mentioning that “Rust,” a movie director Souza went on to agonizingly complete at Hutchins’ family’s request, stands as a lasting testament to her obvious talent. (Bianca Cline completed the cinematography when the production resumed filming, and the film is dedicated to Hutchins.)

There’s an elegant severity to the natural elements that share the frame with the movie’s characters, manifested in silhouettes against vast cloudy skies, delicate snowfalls, shafts of light in dark interiors and crisp air filled with smoke and dust. A testament to lives cut short, “Rust” is beautifully filmed and all the sadder for it.