The Weight, 2026.
Directed by Padraic McKinley.
Starring Ethan Hawke, Russell Crowe, Julia Jones, Austin Amelio, Avi Nash, Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen, Sam Hazeldine, George Burgess, Jeff Hallman, Alec Newman, Avy Berry, Cameron Brady, Eric Ford, Peter Lewys Preston, Neil McGarry, and Dylan Page.
SYNOPSIS:
Desperate to save what is left of his family, during the height of the Great Depression a battle-scarred veteran is hired to help smuggle a fortune in gold across 100 miles of impenetrable wilderness.
Tasked with transporting gold bars out of a mine and navigating an Oregonian perilous forest en route to a drop-off point during the Great Depression, director Padraic McKinley’s debut feature The Weight (from a story by Leo Scherman, Matthew Booi, Matthew Chapman, with the former two penning the screenplay) doesn’t so much as peak early with a chest-tightening sequence involving a rickety, unstable bridge calling for unorthodox means to move pieces across one at a time – picture Ethan Hawke standing on a safe spot in the middle, desperately hoping he catches the gold bars coming his way like he is an outfielder balancing and maneuvering on the smallest space imaginable, to then chuck them the other half of the way to the opposite side – but sets a consistent standard of how grueling, arduous, and unpredictably challenging this trek will be. If the group of prison laborers loses one gold bar, they can kiss any promise of early freedom goodbye.
Sometimes, all it takes is one scene to completely lock into a film, which is not to say that The Weight is uninteresting or bland before this. It is quite the contrary, but more so stressing the point that this one scene generates a stressful amount of tension that, alongside the captivating performances – especially the central turn from Ethan Hawke, demanding and rough on the body – is sustained across the five-day journey, which includes other obstacles, some caused by the terrain and others by human beings. Honestly, even if the rest of the movie fell apart, it would still be worth the price of admission for that scene alone; it is pit-in-your-stomach, inventive filmmaking that calls to mind William Friedkin’s Sorcerer, but without resorting to uninspired imitation.
The human lives here are also equally worth investing in, as these are men we come to learn have been arrested and rounded up into this labor camp for questionable reasons, certainly deserving better than their fate being decided by successfully moving this gold for Russell Crowe’s warden, Clancy, trying to hide every trace of it in response to new legislation stating it is illegal to possess such bars.
Caught up in this mess is Ethan Hawke’s widowed father, Samuel Murphy, a mechanic doing his crafty best to stay afloat financially for himself and his daughter, Penny (Avy Berry), and avoid eviction. At one point, she amusingly suggests that maybe he should have told their neighbor something is wrong with her car so he could fix it for a payday. That said, not everything about Samuel’s parenting is father-of-the-year material, though he unquestionably loves his daughter. The ensuing separation after a run-in with the police is slightly heavy-handed, but offers more than enough reason to engage with the bulk of the premise, in which Samuel is guaranteed early release upon successfully transporting the gold. Time is also of the essence, as when one month is up, Penny will be placed into foster care.
Working in a labor camp clearing out the terrain for construction of a road, Samuel impresses Clancy with his ingenuity and resourcefulness in moving a large boulder. As such, he is selected for the job and granted his choice of crew, escorted by a couple of henchmen, and is eventually joined by the indigenous Anna (Julia Jones), who wishes to escape the mines and will assist on the journey.
The group, which includes everything from a socialist person of color wrongly classified as white (Avi Nash) to a mild-mannered farmer (Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen), and more, ensures that none of these characters feel interminable. In a lesser film, they would simply be bodies on the journey here to either survive or die for grim entertainment while driving home the danger of the situation. Instead, each dance with death is preceded by some stimulating banter or philosophical arguing between the group, with Austin Amelio’s Rankin serving as a temperamental wildcard. That’s also not to say all of them are fully fleshed out, but that there is enough here to differentiate the supporting cast from Ethan Hawke’s Helping Hand #1 and so on and so forth.
Naturally, this intensity is heightened by filming on location and by putting the ensemble through the wringer physically, culminating in more traditional, scintillating action and violence. As such, the appropriately heavy score from Latham and Shelby Gaines takes on a delirious tone as a toll is taken on everyone’s body. Equally immersive is the cinematography by Matteo Cocco, which gradually brings the group further into focus as they walk toward the camera in the forest, or smartly chooses not to cut and instead circles a character preparing to engage in physical confrontation or exchange gunfire. Whether on that previously mentioned unstable bridge or underwater, the camera is right there in the thick of it, heightening the white-knuckle suspense throughout Padraic McKinley’s The Weight. As far as directorial debuts go, this one is a gold bar.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder
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