"Last Take: Rust and the Story of Halyna" Review

On October 21, 2021, Ukraine-born cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was accidentally shot and killed by Alec Baldwin on the set of the movie Rust when a prop gun in which a live round had been loaded discharged. The film's writer & director, Joel Souza, was also wounded when the bullet struck him after passing through Hutchins. It spawned a media firestorm of interest and speculation for the following year-and-a-half as there were multiple lawsuits and criminal trials resulting in one conviction (of armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed), one guilty plea (1st assistant director David Halls), and Baldwin skating free of judgement thanks to slick lawyering.

Now the events and aftermath are the subject of Hulu's original documentary, Last Take: Rust and the Story of Halyna, directed by her friend and filmmaker Rachel Mason. Using bodycam footage from first responders, tapes of the interviews at the sheriff's station, plus new interviews with Souza, cast members, and crew, a more comprehensive picture of what happened leading up to the accident and the aftermath then what was generally hyped up in the media and online chatter.

A picture of a stressed, chaotic production with not enough money and too much corner cutting emerges where safety concerns weren't addressed to the point where a good chunk of the camera crew quit. It was this short-handed situation which directly led to Hutchins and Souza being in the line of fire as there were no remote monitors - the "video village" most productions have where the director et al would look at what the camera is seeing - and thus were forced to use the monitor on the Steadicam to line up the shot. If they had video village, the bullet would've gone elsewhere, probably into a wall, not two humans.

The obvious culprit was Gutierrez, a then-24-year-old nepo baby (her stepfather is Thell Reed, a champion shooter and trainer of actors in cool gun use for movies) who was in charge of the guns and looks overwhelmed in the behind-the-scenes footage with her yellow and green hair. (It's amusing to see her post-accident in brown hair as her lawyer obviously told her to get a normal human hair color instead of looking like a Hot Topic clerk who shouldn't have been dealing with weapons.) But we learn that in addition to her armorer duties, she was working as a props assistant and getting pressure from producers that she's spending too much time on the guns and not these other duties. However, as messed up as that was, she barely registers any remorse as most Zoomer gen brats are trained to never be responsible.

As much as Baldwin has spent much of the past couple of decades being an absolute a-hole with clear rage issues, you can't help but feel his shock and horror when informed that Hutchins had died, captured on tape. If you were unsympathetic to his plight because of the way he did interviews to disavow any responsibility for the shooting, this shows he did have a human reaction. At first. Then when you see how he was able to get his case tossed on an irrelevant technicality, feel free to think poorly of him.

Eventually, after the trials, production on Rust resumed with a new cinematographer. Reaction to this was typical with online yakkers accusing the producers of ghoulish greed, but the case is made that the best way to honor Hutchins would be to get her final work seen. Her mother back in Ukraine is interviewed and supported this decision. It was screened last year at a Polish cinematography conference that Hutchins frequently attended and the glimpse we get show she was making some beautiful images and her loss to movies was great. (As of now, Rust still doesn't have distribution.)

 While the title - Last Take: Rust and the Story of Halyna - implies more details about Hutchins' life, it's mostly about her tragic end. While more detail about how the producers penny-pinching led to crew mutinies and death would've been appreciated, overall Mason does a good job laying out what happened and what it means.

One poor choice, though, was the foolish decision to not credit people with their full names. At first when actors were being listed as "Josh" or "Devon", it seemed like they may've been extras or bit players, but when "Frances" is recognizably Frances Fisher (Unforgiven, Titanic) the silliness of this snapped into focus.

 The greatest lesson taught by Last Take: Rust and the Story of Halyna - other than don't hire stupid young women to manage gun safety; in fact, one guy in another role here rattles off a very long list of background qualifications that had me literally yelling, "Why wasn't HE the armoror?!?" - is that just because the "news" media reports endlessly and breathlessly about a story, it doesn't mean you're getting all the details one needs to form an informed opinion.

Score: 7.5/10. Catch it on Hulu.