‘Last Take: Rust and the Story of Halyna’ Review: A Fascinating Probe Into the Death of Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins

variety.com:

Joe Leydon Film Critic During my interview a while back with a director of small-budget Westerns, he explained to me that if you keep your costs down low enough and, better still, cast a recognizable character actor or country music star — not a superstar, but someone recognizable — to promote in packaging and advertising, you could turn a profit just on DVD and Blu-ray sales. “You do it right,” he said, “and you make your money back from Redbox and big-box stores.

You do it wrong — you get ‘Rust.’” It’s a theory that might seem dated today — more than likely, that director now relies heavily if not exclusively on sales to streaming platforms — but the industrial-strength pressure to pinch pennies and stretch dollars continues apace for indie genre filmmakers.

As director Rachel Mason makes abundantly clear in her exceptional Hulu documentary “Last Take: Rust and the Story of Halyna,” such measures can have fatal consequences.

On Oct. 21, 2021, Ukrainian-born cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, a vivacious woman viewed in the U.S. film industry as a rising talent, was killed on the New Mexico set of “Rust,” an indie Western starring Alec Baldwin as Harlan Rust, an aging outlaw determined to protect his nephew after the boy is charged with murder after an accidental killing.