In the first episodes of “The Baldwins” on TLC, we follow Alec and Hilaria Baldwin and their family in the summer of 2024, in the time just before, during and after Baldwin’s trial for involuntary manslaughter in the “Rust” accidental shootings. There’s no denying the stress on the Baldwins, but of course the real tragedy is that cinematographer Halyna Hutchins lost her life, leaving behind a young son, a husband, friends and family who loved her, and a still-building career as a visual storyteller.
Now comes the compelling and heartbreakingly effective Hulu documentary “Last Take: Rust and the Story of Halyna,” with director-producer Rachel Mason doing a beautiful job of balancing a solid recap of the circumstances surrounding the horrifying events of October 21, 2021, with a tribute to Hutchins’ artistry and her infectious personality.
Drawing from behind-the-scenes footage and photos on the “Rust” set, police footage from the scene and from interrogation rooms, interviews with actors and production staffers as well as director Joel Souza (who was wounded but fully recovered) and Hutchins’ personal archives, “Last Take” is a powerful piece of work.
The opening of “Last Take” is a breathtaking shot of the sun setting in New Mexico, as we hear Hutchins’ voice: “This is kind of nice. Looking cool in the wide.” Filming is about to commence on “Rust,” an independent Western starring Baldwin (also a producer on the film) as the aging outlaw Harland Rust. The documentary flashes forward to the 12th day of a scheduled 21-day shoot as we hear the script supervisor calling 911 and saying, “We have two people shot on a movie set. We need help immediately.”
The police camera footage is like something out of a time-travel movie, as ambulances and squad cars arrive and a helicopter swoops in on a make-believe Western town. Graphics depict text messages to Hutchins’ phones, with friends and loved ones sending messages such as, “Hey Halyna, just saw the news that someone got shot on your set, is that true?’ and, “Answer me and say that you are alive.”
Sometime after the fact, director Mason, a friend of Hutchins, tells us, “We were both filmmakers and moms,” and we see home video footage of the two of them hiking with their children — the last time Mason saw Hutchins.
We see behind-the-footage of Hutchins and Souza scouting locations, as well as rehearsals of stunt sequences and the filming of action scenes, interspersed with interviews with a number of production personnel and actors. The actress Frances Fisher, who has co-starred in such films as “Unforgiven” and “Titanic,” recalls an unsettling first encounter with Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the armorer on the film, who interrupted a talk she was having with Baldwin: “This girl comes over and interrupts our conversation. She’s got an armful of guns. Just barreled her way in and I thought, it’s very unsafe to be walking around base camp with a whole bunch of guns in your hand, like, have they been cleared. Why are you doing this?…Then I found out she was armorer …”
On the day before the shooting, a majority of the camera crew left the project, citing safety concerns among other factors. This meant there was no “Video Village,” i.e., a tent with video monitors, for the director and cinematographer to see exactly how the takes would look, which led to Souza and Halyna being directly in front of Baldwin when the gun went off.
It was so beyond the realm, so unthinkable, that a live round could have been in the prop gun that Souza kept telling hospital staffers they were mistaken, until they showed him the X-ray of the bullet that had lodged in his shoulder — and the bullet itself. When investigators show Baldwin photos of the bullet, he says, “That’s not a movie bullet. That’s a bullet. How did that happen? Somebody put a live round in the gun. … This is the most horrifying thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
After assistant director David Halls pleaded no contest to negligent use of a deadly weapon and was sentenced to six months probation, Gutierrez-Reed was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 18 months in prison and the case was dismissed against Baldwin, the decision was made (with the blessing of Hutchins’ husband) to return to the set and finishing filming. In Kyiv, Ukraine, Halyna’s mother, Olga Solovey, says, “I wanted this to happen…because it was a big work [for] Halyna. She wanted this movie to be finished.” (However, when the film premiered in Poland last November, Solovey, who is suing the production and Baldwin, issued a statement saying she would not be attending “when there is still no justice for my daughter.”)
As of this writing, there are no deals in place for “Rust” to be released commercially. In the meantime, “Last Take” is a gut-wrenching reminder of a terrible tragedy that happened because mistakes were up and down the line — mistakes that were easily preventable if only the proper and safe measures had been taken.