'The Trial of Alec Baldwin' Abramorama/Courtesy Everett Collection Logo text Rory Kennedy‘s The Trial of Alec Baldwin begins with a text disclaimer that the 30 Rock and Miami Blues star had no editorial control over the documentary. In addition, he received no compensation for the documentary, nor did he provide any financing.
I never would have given any consideration to the latter. Kennedy isn’t my favorite documentarian, but the Queen of Chess, Last Days in Vietnam and Ethel filmmaker is a pro. It’s mostly just a way of saying, “Please don’t sue.”
The Trial of Alec Baldwin
The Bottom Line Provocative but frustrating. Release date: October 1 Director: Rory Kennedy 1 hour 51 minutesRegarding the former, thinking back on the 111-minute running time of The Trial of Alec Baldwin, I can’t recall anything that would have been meaningfully different, or would have needed to be meaningfully changed, if Baldwin had been given some editorial control.
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The title of Kennedy’s documentary has two meanings and it’s best to acknowledge that one of those meanings is more successfully addressed here.
To watch The Trial of Alec Baldwin as a chronicle of the tragic death of Halyna Hutchins on the set of the indie feature Rust — either as a search for answers or just a recap of legal proceedings that are, in various forms, still ongoing — is to be somewhere between disappointed and aghast.
The film only gets to Baldwin’s actual trial in the last 30 minutes, and while you will come away with a solid sense of how horribly the prosecution screwed things up, if you want to know what really happened on the set of Rust in October 2021, you will get no more clarity than if you arrived with zero awareness at all. More than that, if you come to the documentary thinking it’s actually about this on-set nightmare, you may be surprised by the fact that Hutchins is nearly invisible in the film. No effort is made to contextualize her life or her career.
Through most of the second half of the documentary, her name isn’t mentioned, nor is her picture featured. The film, when it reaches its conclusion, does so with nary a final acknowledgement of Halyna Hutchins.
If it isn’t truly about the literal trial of Alec Baldwin, what is The Trial of Alec Baldwin about?
Well, it’s generally focused on the origins of and justifications for Baldwin’s multi-decade persecution complex. There’s also some insight into Baldwin’s perspective on why his role in Hutchins’ death was received the way it was by the public and media, and how that factored into the epic botch the prosecution made of the case against him.
I got hung up on how thoroughly The Trial of Alec Baldwin foregrounds Baldwin’s own victimhood, to the point that if he says a single personal word about Hutchins I missed it entirely. But it’s hard to deny that Baldwin’s extensive participation in the film — unpaid and unpaying, lest one forget — yields moments of shocking revelatory access.
Kennedy, who describes herself in the press notes as an “acquaintance” of Baldwin prior to the doc, gained that access starting in the winter of 2023, when the state of New Mexico filed criminal charges. She and a presumably small camera crew are with Baldwin when he goes to Montana to finish production on Rust (shoots and reshoots that he admits he’s only doing to benefit Hutchins’ young son); in New York City as his career and legal circumstances are in limbo; and then in New Mexico for the eventual trial.
Prior to that time, Kennedy’s able to rely on behind-the-scenes footage from the Rust production, as well as footage from the interrogation and press reactions in the aftermath of the accidental shooting. Much of the same footage was utilized, to more coherent effect, in Rachel Mason’s Last Take: Rust and the Story of Halyna, a documentary that premiered back in 2025 on Hulu. That film had large flaws, but if your two biggest questions are “What happened on the set of Rust?” and “Who was Halyna Hutchins?” it’s far superior, because it aspires to answer those questions. The Trial of Alec Baldwin doesn’t.
The Trial of Alec Baldwin doesn’t even try to answer the more specific questions of “Who is Alec Baldwin and what did Alec Baldwin truly have to do with the death of Halyna Hutchins?”
This project’s biggest question boils down to, “Who do we perceive Alec Baldwin to be and, if Alec Baldwin gave unfettered access to a documentary crew at the most vulnerable time in his life, would your perception be changeable?”
Boosted by sister Elizabeth, the doc fills in the gaps on Baldwin’s economically challenged childhood, the course that led him to acting rather than law or politics.
Boosted by lots of clips, the doc gives us the basics of Baldwin’s rise as a movie and television star.
Then boosted by many, many more clips, the doc shows Baldwin’s contentious relationship with the paparazzi, the legitimate press and then his various other run-ins with the law. Daughter Ireland is present primarily to defuse the optics of the “rude, thoughtless little pig” voicemail, one of those things that has permanently colored some people’s impression of the actor.
Finally, you get a lot of Baldwin, shot in various opulent locations, offset by lighting choices to accentuate how haggard he was looking at this point. Wife Hilaria Baldwin is generally shot in full light and given the grace to look prepared for the moment, while Alec is often featured in gloomy found light or with uncomfortable intimacy from the passenger seats of cars and whatnot.
The absence of glam is part of the strategy and here’s where it doesn’t matter whether or not Baldwin had editorial control or was paid: He is an extremely intelligent man and a very good actor, so unless he’s being ambushed, Baldwin is always going to come across roughly as he chooses to and roughly as he has enough self-control to.
Does that mean he’s always successfully calculating and always acting? Heavens no. Despite having seen the blowback from the George Stephanopoulos interview in which he said he felt sadness but not guilt or remorse about Hutchins’ death, he barely even musters that degree of empathy here. This is a portrait of a depressed man, borderline anhedonic as he talks about the lack of pleasure he has derived from his career and his lack of interest in resuming the life he had before.
It doesn’t even matter if he’s going for sympathy or just understanding from the audience; the truth is that I don’t think The Trial of Alec Baldwin is going to change minds. And that may be Kennedy’s real point — that the true trial of Alec Baldwin has been happening for 40 years, beginning when his life was seemingly as good as it was ever going to get. If he was being pre-judged at his pinnacle, how could he possibly have been judged fairly — by the public or the legal system — when he was at his nadir?
It’s provocative stuff, but whether Baldwin’s nadir is the story anybody wants or needs to hear is another story. Because it’s perfectly fair to believe — though Kennedy and Baldwin seem not to — that the name that should end any conversation about this is always the same: Halyna Hutchins.
Full credits
Director: Rory Kennedy Production Companies: Aperture Media Partners, Cross Creek Media, Indus Valley Media and Radiant Media Studio, Zoltana Films Producers: Rory Kennedy, Mark Bailey, Julia Marchesi Executive Producers: Jared Underwood, Andrew C. Robinson, Colin Marshall, Todd Thompson, Rita Powers, Tanner Cusumano, Rob Guillermo, Ray Maiello, Louis Krubich, Dan Fried, Randy Jones Toll, Steven Toll Editor: Jawad Metni Cinematographer: Jenna Rosher 1 hour 51 minutesTHR Newsletters
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