Russell Crowe has built an impressive legacy throughout his decades-long career, portraying some of Hollywood’s most unforgettable characters, including Maximus in Gladiator and John Nash in A Beautiful Mind. With more than 60 film credits and over 10 television appearances to his name, Crowe has firmly cemented his place among Hollywood’s most recognizable and desirable leading men. Add Ethan Hawke to the mix, and you might just have the recipe for a near-perfect film.
Crowe’s latest film, The Weight, is earning praise from critics, adding another intriguing title to the actor’s extensive filmography. The historical drama premiered on Sept. 18 and has already earned an impressive 93% Tomatometer score and 82% Popcornmeter score on Rotten Tomatoes. Crowe and Hawke lead the cast as Warden Clancy and Samuel Murphy in this story set in 1933 Oregon. After Murphy is torn from his daughter (Julia Jones) and sent to a labor camp, Clancy tempts him with early release on the condition that he smuggles gold through the deadly wilderness. But as betrayal festers within the crew, Murphy begins to question just how far he’s willing to go to see his child again.
More impressively, The Weight received a glowing 4 out of 4-star review from RogerEbert.com, a nearly impossible feat for most movies. Matt Zoller Seitz, Editor-at-Large of RogerEbert.com and Pulitzer Prize finalist for criticism, praises the film for taking several unexpected turns. What initially appears to be a prison movie quickly transforms into a wilderness adventure before becoming a psychological thriller. However, these twists and turns work in the film’s favor, with Seitz writing that The Weight is “successful in every department.”
The positive reviews may be partially attributed to just how immersive the filming experience was for the cast. Hawke and Jones recently sat down with MovieWeb’s Joe Deckelmeier to discuss the challenging filming conditions, revealing that whatever their characters endured on screen, they endured too. One thing is for certain: no green screens were used in the making of The Weight. The forest scenes weren’t filmed on a soundstage, they were actually shot in the woods. Even the scene in which Hawke’s character walks through a river wasn’t simply a case of acting like he was in the water. Hawke said, “There’s a reason the film feels so visceral, because it was.”
This immersive filming style may have played a significant part in critics applauding the film’s ’70s-style adventure feel. Mitchell Beaupre of The A.V. Club praised The Weight for capturing the spirit of old-fashioned adventure films, writing, “A nerve-shredding tale of adventure and suspense, The Weight harkens back to old-fashioned fare like John Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and William Friedkin’s Sorcerer.” But with a movie intentionally paying homage to classic ’70s adventure films, not every critic was sold on the familiar formula. Peter Travers of The Travers Take had his reservations, though Hawke and Crowe seemingly helped elevate the material. Travers writes,
“Predictable? To say the least. But Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe add a piercing vulnerability to the standard chest thumping.”
The Weight is playing in select theaters now.
