Art horrifically imitates life in “Rust,” the film that Alec Baldwin was working on when he accidentally shot and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins with a live round loaded into a prop gun.
The movie, which premiered last night at the Camerimage Festival in Poland, has a scene that eerily parallels the young mother’s death on set, reports indicate.
“The second [time a trigger is pulled] leads to a character’s accidental death, engendering a full-bore gasp from premiere attendees,” wrote a critic in Vulture.
The writer added that “Rust” is difficult to separate from its real-life deadly catastrophe while watching.
“‘Rust’ didn’t choose to echo its own tragedies, but they course through a film that is often compelling and capable, an appropriately unvarnished western tale about guilt, blame, family, law, and devotion.”
There will be a lot of questions about why the film was completed at all — except maybe to recoup the money already spent on it.
Production on the movie in New Mexico was halted in 2021, after which prosecutors pressed charges against Baldwin, accusing him of running a dangerous set where blank rounds were intermixed with live ones.
The involuntary manslaughter case against him was thrown out by a New Mexico judge in July, while the film’s armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed is currently serving 18 months in prison.
Production resumed in 2023.
The Vulture reviewer said that Baldwin, who plays an 1880s Kansas outlaw named Harland Rust, seems shaken-up onscreen.
“Baldwin is often off-balance,” the report said. “His accent and the overall volume of performance wobble from scene to scene; the relationship with [Patrick Scott] McDermott’s Lucas veers between affection and disinterest.”
A filmmaker at the Poland premiere told Variety that “Rust” is a “solid Western. I think it looked beautiful with really amazing cinematography.” An independent film, “Rust” currently has no planned American release date or distributor.
Not in attendance was Hutchins’ mother, Olga Solovey, who blasted Baldwin this week in a statement.
“It was always my hope to meet my daughter in Poland to watch her work come alive on screen,” Solovey said, per The Hollywood Reporter. “Unfortunately, that was ripped away from me when Alec Baldwin discharged his gun and killed my daughter.”
Solovey added: “Alec Baldwin continues to increase my pain with his refusal to apologize to me and his refusal to take responsibility for her death . . . Instead, he seeks to unjustly profit from his killing of my daughter. That is the reason why I refuse to attend the festival for the promotion of Rust, especially now when there is still no justice for my daughter.”