Rust
Falling Forward Films | Release Date: May 2, 2025 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
46
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 21 Critic Reviews
Positive:
3
Mixed:
15
Negative:
3

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
30
The New YorkerRichard BrodyMay 21, 2025
Despite, or perhaps because of, the story’s stark melodramatic clarity—the rooting interest of saving a child from injustice, the outlaw with a heart of gold risking his life to undertake that responsibility—“Rust” is a painful slog and a nearly inert experience. Read full review
75
Original-CinLiz BraunMay 8, 2025
The film is long and slow, but never boring. There is, however, a sense that the various storylines are not woven together completely. Read full review
40
The IndependentAdam WhiteMay 8, 2025
What is meaningful, I suppose, is that you never once stop thinking about Hutchins while watching Rust, nor the shoddy work environment that led to her death. . . But this is a very hollow, very dark victory. Read full review
65
Film ThreatAlan NgMay 5, 2025
The visuals make this feel like an actual Western, even though it doesn’t have the epic scale of the great Hollywood Westerns. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleMay 2, 2025
There’s an elegant severity to the natural elements that share the frame with the movie’s characters, manifested in silhouettes against vast cloudy skies, delicate snowfalls, shafts of light in dark interiors and crisp air filled with smoke and dust. A testament to lives cut short, Rust is beautifully filmed and all the sadder for it Read full review
40
The TimesTim TeemanMay 2, 2025
The most memorable aspect is also the best memorial to Hutchins’s skills — the on-screen composition of beautiful, open landscapes, captured in daytime and dusk, and at night the flickering of fire illuminating Baldwin and McDermott’s faces as they talk. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriMay 2, 2025
The picture is dedicated to Hutchins, and its brooding elegance, its rich shadows and evocative close-ups, demonstrates her achievement: Visually, Rust is often astonishing — which of course reminds us all over again of the dark specter hanging over the film. Read full review
40
The GuardianJesse HassengerMay 2, 2025
Halyna Hutchins is the movie’s saving grace. Without her work, it wouldn’t be worth a look at all. Read full review
40
Rolling StoneDavid FearMay 2, 2025
There’s a true-crime aura that hangs over every scene like a shroud — an unshakable sense that you’re not watching a Western so much as a ghost story. Read full review
50
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzMay 2, 2025
The film’s cinematography is the best thing about it. There are solid performances, some believably purplish dime-novel dialogue, and other compensatory pleasures, but “Rust” is a saddlebag full of scenes and moments borrowed from great Westerns and embellished. Read full review
50
VarietyOwen GleibermanMay 2, 2025
It’s a handsome and watchable indie art Western, set in 1882, that turns into a sentimental cross-generational buddy film. Yet I can’t say that the movie, in the end, is especially good. It’s got a bare-bones plot, it lopes along more than it takes wing, and for no good reason it’s two hours and 19 minutes long. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterLovia GyarkyeMay 2, 2025
The film is competently made and absorbing at times, but there’s a workaday quality that slows its momentum. It’s a handsomely made project, but a story about such a complicated set of characters should make us feel more strongly, and Rust struggles to accomplish that. Read full review
50
The New York TimesManohla DargisMay 2, 2025
What is undeniable is that because Rust looks as good as it does, every time riders on horseback appear against a florid sky, it isn’t the characters you think about — it’s Halyna Hutchins. Read full review
60
ColliderLuna GuthrieMay 2, 2025
It is about as standard a Western as you can imagine, one that hits all the narrative beats and clichés expected of the genre, but the technical quality of it is undeniable, bolstered by gorgeous cinematography, strong performances, and a really impressive turn from its child star, Patrick Scott McDermott. Read full review
60
Wall Street JournalKyle SmithMay 2, 2025
Cobbling together ideas from other, better movies, Rust isn’t original enough to be a must-see, but it didn’t deserve to be canceled because of an accident, either. Mr. Baldwin has been largely absent from the screen in recent years, and this effort is a reminder that, to use a word often applied to Harland Rust himself, he remains formidable. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn HornadayMay 1, 2025
Rust, Alec Baldwin and Joel Souza’s slow-moving, sepia-toned homage to the American western, is the kind of respectable if unremarkable genre exercise that would have come and gone without much notice were it not for the circumstances of its making. Read full review
63
USA TodayBrian TruittMay 1, 2025
Storywise, it’s a solid if overlong tale of family and redemption – fans of “Yellowstone” or “Horizon” will find stuff to love. Where “Rust” stands out is in its look, a gorgeously shot production with an emphasis on contrasts and dark colors that’s a testament to the talents of Hutchins and fellow cinematographer Bianca Cline. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleBob StraussMay 1, 2025
Rust isn’t so much a poor story or even badly told; there’s just too much of it, strung out along a discursive narrative trail that turns out to be unnecessarily repetitious. Read full review
25
New York PostJohnny OleksinskiMay 1, 2025
The tragedy of Hutchins’ death overshadows anything that’s good about the film, sadly including her own grand cinematography. Read full review
38
The Associated PressJocelyn NoveckMay 1, 2025
Yes, the cinematography is what stands out here. There are also several compelling performances, though Baldwin’s somewhat halting, somber turn is not among them. Read full review
60
The Daily BeastNick SchagerMay 1, 2025
Rehashing clichés with formal polish but little novelty, this oater is a dour affair made all the grimmer by the fact that there isn’t a second of its 139 minutes that isn’t colored, in some way, by the on-set shooting that made it notable, and notorious, in the first place. Read full review
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