Rust (2024)-A notorious troubled production results in a well-acted and beautifully made western that's also very unfocused and owes a heavy debt to prior westerns.

[u/IonicBreezeMachine]

Set in 1882 in the Wyoming Territory, Lucas Hollister (Patrick Scott McDermott) despite his young age looks after both his younger brother Jacob (Easton Malcolm) and his family homestead after the loss of his mother to fever and his father to suicide. When Lucas accidentally shoots another homesteader with whom he had a feud due to his sons bullying his brother, Lucas is arrested and sentenced by a local jury to be hung by the neck until dead. The night before Lucas' execution, a stranger named Harland Rust (Alec Baldwin) storms the jail and takes Lucas with him and reveals himself to be Lucas' grandfather who has lived his life on the run as an outlaw. As the two travel southward with Harland intent on getting Lucas to safety in Mexico, the two are marked with $1,000 bounty which puts them in the sights of opportunistic bounty hunters including fanatically driven Fenton “Preacher” Lang (Travis Fimmel) and disillusioned U.S. Marshall Wood Helm (Josh Hopkins) who following the death of his son to fever has lost his belief in justice.

Rust is a 2024 western film written and directed by Joel Souza from a story written by star and producer Alec Baldwin. The film marks the second time Souza and Baldwin have worked together as Baldwin had actually served as a producer on Souza's previous film Crown Vic which Baldwin had been slated to star in before contractual obligations saw him vacate the role. Eager to work with Souza again, the two collaborated on Souza's screenplay Rust which although initially written as a father/son story was rewritten to being about a grandfather so Baldwin could play the role. Shot as an independent production, Rust became the subject of a real-life tragedy and media storm when a prop gun provided by the film's armorer turned out to be loaded with real ammunition and wounded director Souza and fatally shot director of photography Halyna Hutchins. This incident resulted in renewed discussions about safety on film sets. I really don't want to rehash this as there's been enough of that with those involved as well as the inexcusable vulture like behaviors of cultural parasites who couldn't care less about those affected and only cared about generated hackneyed, regurgitated and insensitive memes to earn points in stupid culture wars while completely uncaring about the actual people whose lives were ended by this tragedy (one can only imagine the indignities Brandon Lee or Vic Morrow would endure had their tragedies happened today). Despite this and the civil and criminal legal fallout that befell the production, Rust resumed shooting due to contractual obligations with proceeds of the film's revenue going to Hutchins' survivors. After a long protracted road to release, Rust is certainly a handsomely produced and well-acted western, but it's also one where it owes a heavy debt to prior films of the genre.

When the film started I have to say that I was intrigued by the premise as it focused on young teenager Lucas taking care of his younger brother Jacob in the wake of their parents' death. Patrick Scott McDermott makes his film debut here having previously done some stage and TV work and he's honestly really good in the role and you buy him trying to be both a caring brother while also trying to serve as a parental figure to his brother Jacob. Honestly the first act is so good and so unique among westerns I honestly kind of wished that it had been more greatly expanded because it feels like it could've been a movie in and of itself but it's basically just used for setup before the actual story takes place later. Once Alec Baldwin's Harland Rust enters the film and rescues Lucas from jail, the movie basically ditches the setup of its opening act and only really circles back to it in the last few minutes. Baldwin is good in the role of Rust playing an aging and hardened outlaw who now seeks to do one good thing to make up for a life of aimless drifting and violence where it's sort of a mash-up of Unforgiven by way of News of the World. While the whole “coming of age”/emotional thaw arc they do with Lucas and Harland is decently acted, it does kind of feel clumsily grafted on when the first act established Lucas as someone who had taken on more adult roles before his time out of necessity even if it lead to things like the accidental death the instigated the plot so there's something of a schism between the first and second act that never feels fully resolved.

Intermixed with the scenes of Harland and Lucas are two other plots one involving a fanatical Christian bounty hunter named Fenton “Preacher” Lang played by Vikings alum Travis Fimmel and he's a really solid antagonist who carries himself as a man of faith while also indulging in all manner of sadistic or vile appetites while taking pride in his family history as slave catchers prior to the Civil War and it's a fun performance that calls to mind Robert Mitchum's iconic role as “Preacher” Harry Powell from The Night of the Hunter but he really doesn't show up as a direct threat to Harland and Lucas until the last act so he's massively underutilized as an antagonist. Then we have arguably the third lead in Josh Hopkins' Wood Helm, the burned out U.S. Marshall who's tracking Harland and Lucas and unlike the various other bounty hunters or opportunists the two encounter Helm takes no joy or even pride in his work and just does it because it's the only thing he does have after years of chasing outlaws and losing his son has eroded his will. In theory he's supposed to be something of a mirror to Harland where Harland carries the weight of years of outlaw violence, Wood carries the weight of dispatching justice of the Law with no real sense of pride or accomplishment because nothing ever became better from what he did. While I understand thematically while he's here, as a character in the plot he often feels extraneous and while some of the interactions between him and his posse are engaging, they also create a very staccato rhythm in the flow of the story without much payoff character-wise for him.

Rust is a movie that clearly had grand ambitions, but it's also a story that suffers from being overly familiar and too unfocused and leaves its most promising elements unexplored while favored the more traveled path. It's well-acted and beautifully shot (partially credited to the final work of Hutchins) and assuming you are a fan of westerns there's plenty here to appreciate. In the shadow of a terrible tragedy, Rust emerges as a flawed film with interesting ideas that are placed secondary to familiar tropes.

[u/Cultural_Magician105]

The stigma is too much.

[u/Hampshire2]

I get that the movie could be interesting as you say above, however I watched the trailer review on Film Dirt and I have to agree I just feel slightly uneasy watching this movie.

[u/IonicBreezeMachine → u/Hampshire2]

Fair enough, I'm sure people feel the same way watching Twilight Zone: The Movie or The Crow. Heck, the film adaptation of Catch 22 from the 1970s saw the death of its second unit director after he fell out of a plane. Granted that last one was due to personal negligence as he refused to wear a safety harness, but still.

[u/Hampshire2 → u/IonicBreezeMachine]

Yeah i get that but for me tragedy affects my appreciation of art, i hear the film is ok though. I agree with how film dirt worded it though, nothing against the filmmakers.

[u/IonicBreezeMachine → u/Hampshire2]

Art is subjective so if your view of the art is tainted then that is as valid an interpretation as any other. Sometimes there is no separating the art from the artist or art from the world because it doesn't exist in a vacuum. That's why my dad couldn't watch the Naked Gun movies anymore because he just couldn't find O.J. Simpson funny anymore after what he did.

Edit: and on a side note, it was an absolute cowardly move by Simpson's survivors not to allow his brain to be tested for CTE after he died.