“Rust,” a disappointingly slow, brooding, hyper-stylized Western released in theatres last Friday.
Set in late 19th-century Wyoming, the film follows the story of Lucas Hollister, a young orphan charged with the murder of a rancher looking to take his inheritance away from him.
Lucas’ grandfather, Harland Rust, a grizzled outlaw who almost exclusively speaks in cliche tough guy catchphrases, comes to break him out of jail so he can escape to Mexico and evade the law.
The two break for the border as a U.S. Marshal and a cartoonishly evil bounty hunter chase them all the way down to El Paso.
Harland Rust is played by Alec Baldwin, who maintained a constipated facial expression throughout the entire film. In case you forget his character’s name, it gets repeated at least thirty times during its entire runtime.
While the film’s stylized cinematography is very well done and does a fantastic job of showcasing the natural beauty of the surrounding nature, half of the scenes are just wide-angle landscape shots of men on horseback. Much of the action is shot in close-ups with a lot of cutting, so fans of classic Wild West shootout scenes will be very disappointed at the cold and drab action of “Rust.”
Production on “Rust” was delayed for over a year when a prop gun accidentally fired, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. An in memoriam section of the credits honors Hutchins and her role in the film.
Baldwin, who was holding the gun when it went off, talked about the experience and his subsequent legal battles in the trailer for his new hit reality TV series, “The Baldwins.”
Ultimately, “Rust” is an uninteresting genre film that honors the themes and tropes of Westerns without bringing anything new or unique to the table. If it were not for the controversy surrounding the on-set shooting that occurred during production, I doubt anyone would be interested in seeing it.
