Last Take Honors Halyna Hutchins in an Unflinching Look at What Led to the Rust Shooting

On Oct. 21, 2021, cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was accidentally shot and killed by a prop gun containing live rounds on the set of the independent Western film, Rust, she’d been hired to work on in Bonanza City, New Mexico. The film’s writer and director, Joel Souza, was also hit but survived his injuries. The catastrophic accident sent shock waves through the film industry and drew international attention, partially due to the fact that lead actor Alec Baldwin had been holding the prop gun, and because live ammunition had been present on the film’s set.

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In the months that followed, the investigation into what exactly happened, and how live ammunition had ended up on a movie set, became an international sensation, as did the resulting lawsuits and criminal trials. Baldwin, who was also listed as a producer on the film, was charged with one count of involuntary manslaughter, as was the production's property key assistant and armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed.

On March 11, Hulu will premiere a 90-minute documentary, Last Take: Rust and the Story of Halyna, which looks at the human story behind the Rust shooting, pays homage to Hutchins, and looks at the ordeal’s legal aftermath. Directed by Hutchins’ friend Rachel Mason, Last Take features behind-the-scenes footage from the film’s set and includes interviews with numerous people who worked on Rust, including Souza, first assistant director Dave Halls, and members of Hutchins’ camera crew team, plus law enforcement officials and the case’s special prosecutor, Kari Morrissey.

While Last Take takes viewers step by step through the events leading up to the tragic shooting, it also honors the talented cinematographer at the center of the tragedy and raises questions about working conditions on film sets, where on-set safety protocols can be regularly overlooked in favor of meeting filming production deadlines.

Let’s take a closer look at what happened the day of the Rust shooting, and the legal aftermath.

Halyna Hutchins was born Halyna Anatoliivna Androsovych to a Ukrainian family in 1979. Studying international journalism, Hutchins started her career working on documentary films in Eastern Europe before moving to Los Angeles, where she earned her master's degree at the American Film Institute Conservatory. 

Prior to Rust, Hutchins had primarily worked on low-budget and short films. In 2019, American Cinematographer magazine named her as one of 10 up-and-coming directors of photography who are making their mark, which caught the attention of Rust director Joel Souza. In Last Take, Souza describes writing Hutchins’ down as a person he'd like to work with after reading about her work in the issue. Last Take also discusses how Hutchins had been excited to work on Rust because it would have been her first Western. 

Rust went into production on Oct. 6, 2021. Hutchins was working on set on Oct. 21, when she was fatally struck by a live round in the prop gun Baldwin had been holding while rehearsing a scene. She died later that day at the age of 42. 

Hannah Gutierrez-Reed was the armorer on the set of Rust. She is the stepdaughter of Thell Reed, a career movie armorer who famously worked on high-budget Westerns like Tombstone (1993) and The Quick and the Dead (1995).

Gutierrez-Reed was not interviewed for Last Take, but she does appear in police interrogation and body cam footage. 

While it never overtly casts blame on Gutierrez-Reed, Last Take does make note of several issues surrounding her presence on Rust’s set, including her relative lack of work experience and young age (she was 24 in 2021), and the fact that she was technically performing two jobs and may have been rushed in the process of checking that every prop gun was safe before use.

After an OSHA (The Occupational Safety and Health Administration) investigation, Gutierrez-Reed was charged with one count of involuntary manslaughter, as she had loaded the prop gun that killed Hutchins. She was also charged with tampering with evidence, but was later acquitted. On March 6, 2024, Gutierrez-Reed was found guilty by a jury and sentenced to 18 months in prison.

Upon her sentencing, Gutierrez-Reed, who had blamed the film's management for the shooting, asked the presiding Santa Fe judge to consider probation instead of the maximum jail time. "Your honor, when I took on Rust, I was young and naive. But I took my job as seriously as I knew how to," said Gutierrez-Reed. "I beg you, please, don't give me more time. The jury has found me in part at fault for this horrible tragedy, but that doesn't make me a monster. That makes me human."  

Yes. Last Take speaks to Rust’s first camera assistant, Lane Luper, who resigned the day before the shooting, citing safety concerns around the use of guns on set. When asked to describe his reasons for leaving his post, Luper tells filmmakers: "For me, it felt like they didn't really care about the crew being safe. We wanted them to solve these problems, and very quickly felt like somebody was going to get hurt if something didn't change."

Luper also tells filmmakers how he became worried a few days leading up to the accident when he noticed negligent discharges on set. (A negligent discharge is when a firearm or special effect goes off unexpectedly.) "Seeing how firearms were handled on set began to really bother me, and how people would hold guns and firearms get pointed at people.” When Luper texted producers about two back-to-back negligent discharges, his concerns were disregarded. 

“You would expect that the people who are in charge of production—the producers, the adults in the room—would be adults in the room and put a stop to certain things, and would put a stop to safety issues. And that just never happened,” Luper tells filmmakers. The film’s producers did not respond to Luper’s claims in Last Take. In a statement to the Los Angeles Times in 2021 about claims of on-set safety issues, Rust producers said, “Though we were not made aware of any official complaints concerning weapon or prop safety on set, we will be conducting an internal review of our procedures while production is shut down.”    

After the shooting, five additional live rounds were discovered on the Rust set, including in Baldwin’s gun belt and on top of the cart where the crew kept props.

Baldwin has repeatedly denied responsibility for the death of Hutchins, noting that he was told that the prop gun did not contain any live rounds and that live ammunition is always meant to be banned on movie sets. Baldwin has also denied pulling the trigger, but case prosecutors have argued that forensic reports show that the gun could have only gone off because of a pulled trigger.

In his first statement following the shooting on Oct. 22, 2021., Baldwin wrote on social media: “There are no words to convey my shock and sadness regarding the tragic accident that took the life of Halyna Hutchins, a wife, mother and deeply admired colleague of ours.

“I’m fully cooperating with the police investigation to address how this tragedy occurred and I am in touch with her husband, offering my support to him and his family. My heart is broken for her husband, their son, and all who knew and loved Halyna.”

Later, in a statement about the involuntary manslaughter charge, Baldwin’s attorney said: “This decision distorts Halyna Hutchins’ tragic death and represents a terrible miscarriage of justice. Mr. Baldwin had no reason to believe there was a live bullet in the gun—or anywhere on the movie set. He relied on the professionals with whom he worked, who assured him the gun did not have live rounds. We will fight these charges, and we will win.”

More recently, Baldwin has talked about his emotions surrounding the Rust shooting on TLC’s reality show The Baldwins, which also features his wife, Hilaria, and seven children. "A son lost his mom in the most unthinkable tragedy. This is never something to forget, and we're trying to parent through it," Hilaria says to the cameras, attempting to balance their family’s grief while still holding space for Hutchins’ widower and son, who was 10 at the time of the shooting. Meanwhile, Baldwin is shown breaking down in tears, struggling with post-traumatic stress, and managing his escalating OCD as he prepares for a manslaughter trial.

In July 2024, a judge threw out the involuntary manslaughter case against Baldwin with prejudice after the actor's lead attorney, Alex Spiro, argued that prosecutors had concealed evidence of ammunition that may have been linked to the fatal shooting. 

Special Prosecutor Kari Morrissey tried to appeal the judge’s decision, but the office of New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez decided on December 23, 2024, not to “pursue the appeal on behalf of the prosecution.”

Baldwin was also not directly interviewed for Last Take, though he does appear in body cam and police interrogation footage.

In October 2022, Rust Movie Productions reached a settlement with Halyna Hutchins' estate. "I have no interest in engaging in recriminations or attribution of blame (to the producers or Mr. Baldwin,” Matt Hutchins said in a statement at the time. “All of us believe Halyna’s death was a terrible accident. I am grateful that the producers and the entertainment community have come together to pay tribute to Halyna’s final work.” 

However, Matt Hutchins has since claimed that he did not receive the settlement in a timely fashion due to the fact that New Mexico pulled the film's tax credits that were meant to make up some of the settlement funds. Matt was also made an executive producer on Rust, which resumed filming in April 2023 and premiered last fall at Camerimage in Poland.

Hutchins’ mother, Olga Solovey, has criticized Baldwin’s response. In November 2024, Solovey said Baldwin had refused to apologize for the accidental shooting death of her daughter. She also accused him of attempting to "unjustly profit" from the tragedy, which the actor has called "blatantly untrue." 

“It was always my hope to meet my daughter in Poland to watch her work come alive on screen,” Solovey said in a statement at the time. “Unfortunately, that was ripped away from me when Alec Baldwin discharged his gun and killed my daughter. Alec Baldwin continues to increase my pain with his refusal to apologize to me and his refusal to take responsibility for her death. Instead, he seeks to unjustly profit from his killing of my daughter. That is the reason why I refuse to attend the festival for the promotion of Rust, especially now when there is still no justice for my daughter.”

In May 2025, Baldwin will be deposed over his role in the shooting in a civil suit filed by Hutchins' mother, father (Anatolii Androsovych), and sister (Svetlana Zemko) against Baldwin, Rust Movie Productions, and film producers, alleging that they repeatedly ignored safety protocols surrounding the firearms used in Rust. 

The family's lawyer, Gloria Allred, specifically called out the Baldwins' TLC reality series, arguing that it "[ignores] the fact that [he] took a child away from her parents."

She added: "No longer under the threat of criminal prosecution, it is long overdue for Alec Baldwin to admit and face the real-life consequences that he caused Halyna’s parents and sister."