The Weight

The directorial debut of Padraic McKinley is a nice throwback to a time when movies about groups of desperate men trekking through some kind of wilderness with a high-stakes goal and multiple internal conflicts were common at the multiplex. From John Boorman and James Dickey's iconic existential thriller Deliverance (1972) to Lee Tamahori and David Mamet's underrated survival thriller, The Edge (1997), there was a time when movies about manhood being put to the test in an unforgiving natural environment were neither a joke nor a CGI-fest. McKinley's film harkens back to those days and, for the most part, delivers much of what made those pictures so satisfying.

The setting is Oregon in 1933. A perfectly cast Ethan Hawke stars as a recently evicted auto mechanic named Samuel Murphy, who ends up incarcerated and sentenced to hard labor after antagonizing some shady cops who were harassing him and his daughter. With no mom in the picture, the child is placed in a government-run home with little chance of Murphy ever getting to see her again unless he can figure out some kind of early release. That's when the warden, played by Russell Crowe, steps in and offers Murphy the kind of chance that men in thrillers like this jump at. With FDR about to nationalize the American gold supply, a local mine owner plans to secretly remove all the gold from his operation without his scheming crew noticing. Murphy is offered early release and money if he and three other prisoners he thinks are trustworthy can carry the full stash of gold bars in backpacks on a six-day trek through the rugged forest away from the road that leads to the mine.

How all this gold has already been refined and made into bars up at the mine is never explained, and frankly, that's the kind of pesky but hardly insignificant detail that might have been handled better in a movie from the past. You'd also never confuse this for a film from thirty or forty years ago way it looks. Italian cinematographer Matteo Cocco shoots everything in widescreen, with lots of tight close-ups, wide angles, murky color grading, and distorted lens filters (or digital filters) that all seem to be working in conjunction to prevent the viewer from seeing details we desperately would like to have in order to properly follow the action. McKinley has not yet mastered the art of establishing cinematic geography so the audience can understand where characters are in relation to each other from beat to beat, or even who we are seeing in key moments, like fight sequences. Also, the specifics of the plan and journey these men undertake aren't clear enough to support some of what happens in the third act. (I mean, how many cars a day traverse the mountain road that leads to the mine? Surely it can't be so many that one would appear at the convenient point that enables the climactic car chase.)

The screenplay and screen story are credited to four writers, including composer, musician, and writer Shelby Gaines, the son of rugged outdoorsman novelist Charles Gaines. It touches on a number of contemporary themes without dwelling much on them. I usually appreciate it when period stories avoid spoon-feeding their modern subtext to the audience and allow us to make the connections ourselves. However, this script feels like it is awkwardly downplaying present-day metaphors for fear of alienating a segment of its potential audience, even though the characters and time period feel deliberately chosen to do the opposite.

With the action and suspense sequences disappointingly shot and edited, the movie is at its best when characters are talking. Hawke really shines here, adopting a minimalist approach where his face speaks louder than the few lines of dialogue his character mutters when absolutely necessary. It's so refreshing to see an actor of exactly my age who actually looks our age. When Ethan and I grew up, movies were filled with 55-year-old actors who looked like they'd really lived a life. These days, he's one of the few leading men who can credibly pull off a period film like this. His scenes with now-paunchy 62-year-old Crowe are especially good. These are not only the best-written and best-performed scenes, but they're also where you really feel like you could be watching a great movie from the '70s or '80s. Both actors play characters who are much smarter and more even-tempered than the men around them, but these two Depression-era guys of radically different status don't establish the kind of mutual respect we, or possibly they, might expect.

The supporting cast is populated by somewhat unfamiliar faces, which might be due to the indie budget but serves the film well. Austin Amelio, Avi Nash, and Lucas Lynggaad Tonnesen are all solid as Murphy's fellow gold-schlepping convicts, and George Burgess and Cameron Brady appropriately underplay their armed escorts. As an Indigenous runaway from the mining camp who accompanies the men on their trek, Julia Jones applies the same less-is-more performance style as Hawke, creating a lasting impression with little dialogue.

While it may not be as great as going back and rewatching an older movie about a bunch of guys in the wilderness, The Weight is a welcome change of pace that I'm thrilled didn't get relegated to the graveyard of streaming, as most movies of this style and genre seem to be these days.