Atonement in Hollywood and the Old West

After almost five years of on-and-off production and an extensive trial by tabloid, Alec Baldwin’s infamous Western epic Rust finally premiered this month. It’s the story of a tragic death, where a faulty gun kills an innocent bystander, setting off a saga of sin, grief, and atonement as the culprit—the murderer?—plays out his shoddy hand in a high-profile clash with the law. This isn’t just the plot of the film, however, but the real-world tragedy that happened behind the scenes. 

If you know one thing about this film, it’s that cinematographer Halyna Hutchins—a wife, a mother, and by all accounts a dedicated and earnest artist—was shot and killed when Baldwin’s prop revolver misfired on October 21, 2021. That’s about the most definitive thing one can say about the events of that day: Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter charges were quickly dropped after a late filing in 2023; a subsequent grand jury indictment was dismissed with prejudice in 2024; and while Hutchins’ family settled an (undisclosed) wrongful death claim in 2022, civil cases between the family, Baldwin, and other members of the crew who interacted with the gun that day remain ongoing. In a case where intent is obviously absent and where all parties are reluctant to either cast or accept blame, the full truth of legal culpability, if it exists, will likely remain a mystery. 

But that doesn’t mean we can’t speak confidently on morality. 

Rust stands firmly in the tradition of the great American Western, a genre in which the actions of morally grey antiheroes come together in a firm moral code. From The Searchers to Unforgiven, every iconic hero, vigilante, or outlaw teaches us that no matter your intent, killing leaves an indelible mark on a man. Yet it’s often a brutal world or an unjust law that forces him to reconcile his dark nature with his good conscience in the first place. As Baldwin’s own tale plays out in an undignified opera in the press, it’s poetically tragic that this film should offer a path of conscience, so that all parties involved may have a chance at peace. 

Rust takes place in the waning days of the Wild West. It’s 1882, the law has finally come to the burgeoning frontier town of Hayesville, Wyoming, where thirteen-year-old Lucas (Patrick McDermott) is raising his younger brother Jacob alone after their mother succumbed to illness and their father killed himself from grief. Still grieving himself, Lucas is nevertheless saddled with adult responsibilities—tending the farm, serving as both caregiver and provider—but when another boy bullies his brother, his wilful youth wins out. He beats the boy to a pulp and makes an enemy of his victim’s surly father. 

Since the father is now out a farmhand, he plans to take Lucas back to his ranch to work off the debt, indifferent to what that means for Jacob. “I’ll come collect you in the morning,” he says, though Lucas has no intention of going. So when Lucas takes his faulty gun and crests a steep hill the next morning to fire a shot at a wolf seen stalking their livestock, we’re left wondering whether he missed or hit his target. The beaten boy’s father drops from his horse. 

The law quickly and callously finds Lucas guilty of premeditated murder, sentencing him to hang despite his “age and circumstances.” He believes it’s morally abhorrent to flee and leave his brother behind, but he reluctantly runs when his estranged grandfather, legendary outlaw Harland Rust (Baldwin), comes to spring him from the slammer. The story unfolds as the reluctant duo rebuild a relationship from the ashes of their shattered family, outrunning a villainous bounty hunter, and a brooding US Marshal on their way to freedom in Mexico. 

Hutchins’ cinematography carries much of the film, capturing the desaturated landscape of a dying Western frontier and the shadowy silhouettes of the even shadier characters within it. Even so, Rust is not a stand-out Western, mostly due to lazy writing, as character dynamics go largely unexplored. 

From this point forward, there will be spoilers. 

Why is Rust so feared and revered in the West? We learn that he burnt down the banks that took his farm and that he abandoned his daughter (Lucas’ mother) after the rest of his family died. But beyond a vague sense of regret, we’re told very little about the moral transformation that led him back to Lucas. Why frame the story around a suspensefully open-ended murder/accident only to abandon that storyline, never folding it back into the plot? We’re told to presume it was an accident, but we never really find out whether Lucas is a murderer or a victim of a cold, utilitarian system. With a schmaltzy happy ending that sees Lucas and Jacob reunited, we’re not even expected to thoughtfully speculate. At the end, Rust, who is an admitted murderer, gives himself up to the marshal on condition that Lucas be permitted to cross the border. But why is a supposed man of the law so easily convinced to let the boy walk free? He’s gruff and talks in morally ambivalent platitudes—so we’re just expected to believe he’s painfully disillusioned with his role as a faceless enforcer of heartless laws. 

The world today is just as cruel as it was in the West. The brutality of the frontier is but a metaphorical complement to human nature, a timeless fixture of the world anywhere humans inhabit it.

Rust is filled with so many nods to cowboy classics, however, it’s clear what filmmakers were trying to do, even if the execution was less than stellar. Baldwin, who co-wrote the script, said he found inspiration in Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-winning Unforgiven, the story of a retired outlaw trying to live a peaceful life before his conscience, violent proclivities, and a merciless world pull him back to his old ways. We see implicit nods to The Searchers, not just in the vengeance-turned-redemption arc of an ex-Confederate trying to save his niece from her Comanche kidnappers, but in the iconic cinematography where darkened interiors open to vibrant outdoor backdrops, drawing a stark contrast between wilderness and civilization, and our own dark natures lurking subtly within the frame. Naturally, we also see echoes of Shane, in which the most classic line of the genre captures an ethos that has defined nearly every Western in the 75 years since: “There’s no living with a killing. There’s no going back from one. Right or wrong, it’s a brand. A brand sticks.” In the vein of these films, it’s possible to fill in the blanks. 

At the end of the day, Rust and Lucas are both killers—directly or indirectly, “right or wrong”—grappling with the pain they’ve both received and inflicted in an unforgiving world. Rust knows it, he accepts it, and to his shame, knows nothing can change it. He craves forgiveness, but doesn’t believe he deserves it; he doesn’t even know of whom he might ask it. The only absolution a man like Rust can have is to sacrifice himself to the hangman so that Lucas may have a chance to lead a good life. None of this depth is clearly articulated, but two solid performances between Baldwin and McDermott in Hutchins’ moodily lit fireside chat scenes are enough to bring the sentiment through. 

The other great theme of the Western genre—the tension between unjust laws and true justice in a brutal world—comes through in Lucas. The boy can’t run from whatever feelings of shame and culpability may materialize as they eventually did for his grandfather. He may have escaped the noose, but he is still a killer; he will have to live with it, alienated from his home as an outlaw in Mexico. Though Lucas can’t run from his conscience forever, he can and must run from the law. And he simply doesn’t have the luxury to process his shame in real time. 

In an earlier time in the West, his case would have likely been handled differently. We hear fond talk of these times throughout the film: how earlier generations lived more rugged, how they necessarily had to impose a stricter code on themselves, and thus personally uphold it against others—a rudimentary, but in many ways more noble, form of civilization. “The only order that exists in this world is the order we impose,” the marshal says early on about his role as a lawman, yet to realize his eventual compassion towards Lucas is the true hallmark of man-made order in a system of far-removed laws.

In Rust’s generation, perhaps this feud would have been carried on by Lucas and his victim’s son, fading into frontier lore. Perhaps a local elder would have seen the folly of an eye for an eye and told them to squash it. Or perhaps, with no authority to appeal to on the unsettled plains, it would simply have been forgotten as the way of the world. But for better or worse, with the railroad comes the cold, exacting, and impersonal force of the law. Is it right, given the circumstances, that the boy should hang? Or does the law, failing to grasp the ways of the world and people it governs, only perpetuate injustice? 

The film seems to suggest the latter, a nostalgia for a moral code superior to pure law. It’s this which allows man to fully unchain his conscience from his desperate circumstances, as Rust apparently discovered as an outlaw. But it’s this theme that goes sadly unexplored for Lucas. Free in Mexico, he ought to reflect on his sins, the boy he himself left without a father; no one will ever really have a happy ending. 

It’s the hallmark of any great Western to show that while the law may enact justice by its own standard, it cannot induce feelings of shame, it cannot offer absolution, and it most certainly cannot offer the most deeply personal interaction of all: forgiveness. These are what truly define a man’s life, and a good law conforms to a man’s own impulses here. But when the standards of law are off from the nature they should conform to, then he has no choice but to flee, even when his conscience bristles. 

You can say the charges against Baldwin were dropped because he’s Hollywood royalty, and a liberal elite in good standing with America’s cultural arbiters. Or, you can say that’s the only reason the charges were brought in the first place. It doesn’t matter—Baldwin is a killer, and nothing can change that. But has this saga of never-ending court cases, where Baldwin has degraded himself on a press tour of deflection, frenzied self-defense, and shameless victim posturing, helped anyone find justice, let alone peace? 

The normal human reaction to killing, even among the outlaws of the West, is to feel a deep sense of shame, to grieve those whom you’ve harmed along with the piece of the soul you’ve lost, and to seek atonement and forgiveness. One ought to give Baldwin the grace, as a human being, to assume that he does feel this way. But in his own way, he was forced to flee the law in just as undignified a manner as Lucas. 

In our litigious world, where the law is often far from impartial, and the media hunts for every misstep publicly and in real time, Baldwin, too, lacked the luxury of speaking with the dignified shame of a human being who took the life of another. Earnest grief is an implication, shame a confession—anything not carefully filtered through lawyers and PR consultants is a potentially life-ending liability. After all, Baldwin, too, has a family to care for. 

That’s not to defend what he did. But despite legal technicalities, there is no punishment the law can provide that would remedy this tragic accident. Can we accept and atone for our gravest sins? Can we recognize the atonement of others and forgive them for the sins inflicted upon us? These are the only questions that matter, not a hair-width’s difference of finger placement on the trigger of a gun that should have never been loaded in the first place. 

In many ways, the world today is just as cruel as it was in the West. After all, the brutality of the frontier is but a metaphorical complement to human nature, a timeless fixture of the world anywhere humans inhabit it. There can be no happy ending for anyone involved: Baldwin will never get a fair shake in the public eye, and the Hutchins family certainly can never be made whole, no matter the legal or civil outcome. The only path forward is to accept that sin is sin, no matter the intent, and that it is a perpetually sinful world we live in. It’s a deeply personal journey of reflection that should not and cannot play out in public. But it’s the only way anyone has a chance at ever finding peace.