Rust – Legende des Westens (Rust)
U.S.A. 2024

Opening 1 May 2025

Directed by: Joel Souza
Writing credits: Joel Souza
Principal actors: Travis Fimmel, Alec Baldwin, Frances Fisher, Jake Busey, Josh Hopkins

It’s 1882 and springtime in Sedgwick County, Kansas. Lucas, just thirteen years old, does his best to take care of his younger brother Jacob. Due to an unfortunate circumstance, a man is shot, and Lucas is found guilty of murder. He lands in prison with the death penalty, only to be rescued by Harland Rust (Alec Baldwin), who turns out to be his grandfather (i.e., the father of his deceased mother Wilhemina), whom he has never met. At this point we have a road movie as they take off through Wyoming and Colorado, to end in New Mexico. They are followed by US Marshal Wood Helm (Josh Hopkins), as well as bounty hunter Fenton “Preacher” Lang (Travis Fimmel). Travel is difficult, considering it’s the late 1800s and transportation is either by carriage or on horseback. Sometimes each person rides a separate horse, sometimes there are two together on one horse. Sometimes they ride alongside others, including Indians.

Filmed in New Mexico and Montana, horses play an important role, as do the main actors—all men. “A man chooses who he is.” Excellent is fifteen-year-old Patrick Scott McDermott, who plays thirteen-year-old Lucas. Women are mostly in the background with just a few short scenes featuring Lucas’ aunt Evelyn Bassett (Frances Fisher), whom Rust visits for information. Guns play a role and when not riding through beautiful landscapes, the men are shooting. In real life shooting had an important effect on the making of Rust, causing production to stop in October 2021. Actor Alec Baldwin’s gun was unexpectedly loaded. He shot unaware, injuring cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and director Joel Souza. Hutchins died as a result.  Amazingly, filming restarted, and Rust was completed and dedicated to Halyna Hutchins. (Becky Tan)

Second Opinion

Rust is an epical adventure into Sedgewick County, Wyoming Territory, in the 1880s, when the country’s bursting at its seams as the human flow continues westward. A jumble of renegades, ranchers, storekeepers and lawmen, preachers, prostitutes, bounty hunters and criminals, the indigenous, entrepreneurs and scallywags are as unforgiving as is the land’s magnitude, terrain, harsh mercurial climate, and its lawlessness.

A hard land, especially for thirteen-year-old Lucas (Patrick Scott McDermott) having to grow up too fast raising little brother Jacob (Easton Malcolm) with their parents’ graves silhouetted on the hillside. When a trip to town for vital supplies results in a deadly accident, Lucas ends up in jail awaiting the gallows, whence unforeseen forces are put into play. A great-aunt arrives (Frances Fisher), pleads Lucas’ case and her “entreaties have fallen on deaf ears.” Subsequently, his notorious grandfather (Alec Baldwin) steals into town and out, taking Lucas with him. Neither town leadership, nor those nefariously inclined, could have anticipated the tenacity and formidability of decency against wrongs.

Writer-director Joel Souza and producer-star Alec Baldwin’s aim was to create an ode to spaghetti westerns, which they have, remindful of Sergio Leone’s The Good (US Marshal Wood Helm / Josh Hopkins), the Bad (Harland Rust/Baldwin) and the Ugly (“Preacher”/ Travis Fimmel), 1966. The intricate storyline’s tenacity of its characters’ foibles, harsh realities and harder political pandering, their allegiances for survival, and lucid redemption is no better realized than Harland Rust’s rescue of Lucas, and the metamorphoses before their journey ends. The plot allows for seriously mulling its unyielding exposure of absurdities, even perhaps a return to the picture show for another looksee.

Rust’s punctilious commitment to accuracy, visually and in content, is impressive. Halyna Hutchins’ sweeping cinematography is breathtaking, its scope and minutia, e.g., sunrise snowflakes, and Bianca Cline’s meticulous follow-up after Hutchins’ demise from the tragic 2021 onset accident, David Andalman’s editing exactness, particularly considering the multitude of motley characters we meet traveling through the territories, Lilie Bytheway-Hoy and James Jackson’s embracing score, and Bryan Norvelle’s production design. Rust’s gritty, compelling tale’s unflinching realness and complicated relationships, with its amazing cast, and set smackdab alongside turbulent historical times as territories became (free or slave) states heralds one chapter ending and another beginning in the nation’s evolution. “Can we make this any better?” cinematographer Hutchins’s would ask. It is hard to imagine how. (Marinell Haegelin)