A retro 1970s throwback to survival actioners of then, such as “Sorcerer” and “Deliverance,” but here transplanted to the 1930s, Padraic McKinley’s “The Weight” still manages to feel of our own time. That’s because of the nimble, out-of-period performance by Ethan Hawke, playing in refreshingly modern style a resourceful inmate named Samuel Murphy who is tasked with carrying a fortune of stolen gold across 100 miles of Oregon wilderness. Murphy is not acting alone, however, as he’s been assigned to the journey out of a labor camp run by a merciless, tobacco-spitting boss (Russell Crowe) — and some in his merriless band turn out to be savvier, and more malicious, than others.
“The Weight” is rich in atmosphere and as weather-soaked as the fugitive mission William Friedkin staged in 1977’s “Sorcerer” (itself an homage to the transport-survival epic “The Wages of Fear” by Henri-Georges Clouzot). But the screenplay by Matthew Booi and Shelby Gaines (the latter of whom penned Hawke’s Flannery O’Connor directorial effort “Wildcat”) leaves elements of the story underboiled and even confusing, while McKinley and Matthew Woolley’s disjointed editing, especially in the action-packed last stretch, suggests a slice of the movie was left in the edit room. “The Weight” occasionally moves like a spoked wagon on the Oregon Trail through muck and sludge, but with stops along the way that manage to rivet.
When the movie begins, Murphy and his daughter (Avy Berry) can barely eke out a living, evicted from their squalid pad and then separated once Murphy is arrested. He’s gotten himself in some trouble with the police in an alleyway, see, and so he’s sent off to a work camp where Crowe’s imperious warden Clancy tempts him with an early release with a dangerous assignment. The government is shutting down mines along the Oregon Trail and preparing to confiscate the riches. Murphy and a group of men — including three from the camp, and two of Clancy’s choosing from the mine — will transport the gold to safety, with their freedom (presumably) on the other side.
Between the armed men assigned by Clancy (Sam Hazeldine and Jeffrey Lee Hallman), the prisoners (a livewire Austin Amelio, plus Avi Nash and Lucas Lynggaard Tonnesen as more tender-hearted charges), and an Indigenous castaway (Julia Jones), they’re quite the ragtag crew with ever-shifting internal dynamics that are more unpredictably suspenseful than the rather conventional beats of the journey. McKinley shot the film in Germany, with cinematographer Matteo Cocco, where the forest lends a dislocating eeriness to the environment.
“The Weight’s” atmosphere is its greatest asset, from the prog-rock score by Latham and Shelby Gaines that reckons with those ’70s movies of yesteryear to Cocco’s camerawork. The movie is too visually murky at times — what film these days isn’t, seemingly? — which makes moments where certain characters are suddenly in a space or time they weren’t before all the more incoherent. There’s a memorably disquieting sequence in which Lynggaard Tonnesen’s character is sleeping while two other characters descend upon him in a rainstorm, and the only glimpses we get of the events onscreen are lit intermittently by lightning and thunderclaps. Great stuff.
McKinley keeps the proceedings mostly lowkey, however, light on score and dramatic sound mix, until a fast-paced conclusion that closes the movie’s redemption circle — and brings us back to Murphy’s raison d’être at this time, which is to get back his daughter before she’s shuffled off into the ether of the adoption system. Loosely hung onto the structure of the movie is a wisp of romance between Anna (Jones, effective in a mostly silent role) and Murphy, a glimmer of attraction that feels mostly unnecessary and like a product of cheaper versions of this story.
“The Weight” could use a tighter edit throughout, but it’s not without one central force pulling the film across its Europe-shot version of the Oregon Trail, and that would be Hawke. The actor has had a banner past year to display his range, from playing a self-loathing, hard-boozing sad-sack Lorenz Hart in “Blue Moon” to a serial killer of children in “Black Phone 2.” There’s also his role in TV’s “The Lowdown” as a Tulsa bookstore owner pulling the lid off local corruption. In “The Weight,” Murphy, while not an especially deep character, is well-resourced and a natural-born leader to this group of well-intentioned criminals with families on the other end of a perilous mission, and it’s a treat to watch the muscular dynamics and savvy physical particulars of Hawke’s performance. Murphy, like Hawke, is great in a crisis, and “The Weight” could’ve been one without his sturdy, tough-lived performance.
Grade: C+
“The Weight” premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
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