A “grim-faced” Alec Baldwin was seen walking through New York City on Wednesday, a few hours after skipping the world premiere of his controversial film “Rust” in Poland, the Daily Mail reported.
Actually, the 66-year-old Baldwin wasn’t invited to the premiere at the Energa Camerimage international film festival because organizers said his presence would have been “too distracting.”
But it’s hard to imagine that the famously thin-skinned Baldwin would want to sit through a screening of the Western film, surrounded by a crowd of strangers, critics and “rubberneckers,” curious to witness the aftermath of his role in the film’s deadly production.
“It was a cold, overcast afternoon in Toruń, Poland, as a packed theater watched Alec Baldwin shoot people,” Vulture critic Nick Newman began his review published Thursday. Newman summarized what’s now become Hollywood lore — how a potential, low-budget “geezer-teaser,” starring an aging film and TV star, became engulfed in “a whirlpool of tragedy so unthinkable.”
Three years earlier, the film’s Ukrainian-born cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, was killed after Baldwin pointed a gun at her during a rehearsal on the film’s set outside Santa Fe, New Mexico. The gun went off, killing Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza.
Baldwin has said he pulled back the hammer — but not the trigger — and the revolver fired. The frequent “Saturday Night Live” guest star insisted that Hutchins’ death was a tragic accident, but he was investigated for more than a year and charged with involuntary manslaughter. However, the case was ultimately dismissed this summer on the grounds that the prosecution had failed to turn over evidence.
The moment a real bullet fired from a prop gun to kill Hutchins, “the film was transformed into an object of morbid curiosity,” Newman wrote. Baldwin, Souza, Hutchins’ husband, Matthew, and others made the decision to go against conventional wisdom to finish the film. They said they hoped that a completed “Rust” would be a way to honor Hutchins’ legacy and to perhaps make some money to benefit her young son.
But at the film’s world premiere, it was “undeniable” that a certain percentage of people only attended the premiere as a way of “rubbernecking the tail end of a long, difficult, outright-ignoble years-long saga,” Newman wrote.
And those people got in some rubbernecking, according to Newman’s review.
Before the film started, festival organizers asked the audience to stand for a moment of silence in honor of Hutchins. They then said they hoped that people would just watch the film on its own, not as “any tragedy or extended legal proceedings.” During these introductions, no one mentioned Baldwin’s name.
But as soon as “Rust” began, it became impossible for people to not think about what happened to Hutchins, according to Newman.
Set in the 1880s, “Rust” tells the story of a 13-year-old boy who accidentally kills a rancher and flees the law with his grandfather, an aging outlaw. As a Western, there is, of course, plenty of gunslinging.
“The first time a trigger is pulled in Rust, it clicks on an empty barrel; the second leads to a character’s accidental death, engendering a full-bore gasp from premiere attendees,” Newman wrote. “While I didn’t take time to poll this at-capacity crowd, that reaction seemed less from deep investment in a just-started plot than some breath of acknowledgment.”
“Rust didn’t choose to echo its own tragedies,” Newman continued, “but they course through a film that is often compelling and capable, an appropriately unvarnished western tale about guilt, blame, family, law and devotion.”
Yes, Newman gave the film some props, explaining why it’s definitely a cut above other “geezer-teasers.” The pejorative, incidentally, refers to a recent genre of low-budget, direct-to-streaming action films, featuring older, well-known male actors like Bruce Willis or Mel Gibson.
Before Hutchins’ death, Baldwin had expressed high hopes for “Rust” as a work of entertainment and even of art. The Emmy-winning “30 Rock” star may have seen “Rust” as a way to revive a career that was veering into the territory of “geezer-teasers” and a failed network sitcom pilot with Kelsey Grammar. More recently, Baldwin returned to doing cameos on “Saturday Night Live,” and he’s been involved in filming a potentially cringe-inducing reality TV show, co-starring his influencer wife Hilaria Baldwin and their brood of seven young children.
But Newman thought that Baldwin appeared to struggle with his performance. He was “often off-balance,” with his accent and the overall volume of his performance “wobbled from scene to scene.”
Newman acknowledged that his problem with Baldwin’s performance could come from him. “Maybe it’s just uncomfortable watching him deliver numerous kills with a gun not unlike the one in a forever-infamous still from a scene that’s nowhere to be found in this final cut,” Newman wrote.
As it stands, it’s not known whether “Rust” will ever show up in a movie theater or on a streaming service, Newman said. “Whenever it emerges, audiences will find a work of salutary effect and simple pleasure saturated in morbid curiosity — strange monument, ugly footnote,” Newman said.
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