Director: Padraic McKinley
Writers: Matthew Booi, Shelby Gaines
Stars: Ethan Hawke, Russell Crowe, Julia Jones
Synopsis: In Oregon in 1933, Samuel Murphy is torn from his daughter and sent to a brutal work camp. Warden Clancy tempts him with early release if he smuggles gold through deadly wilderness, but betrayal festers within the crew, and Murphy questions how far he’ll go to see his child again.
Arguably the best (unofficial) remake of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear since William Friedkin’s Sorcerer, Padraic McKinley’s The Weight gives us a genuine slice of old-fashioned Americana we literally never see on screen anymore. A movie this good – and this thrilling – seems like a miracle in an era that has (mostly) lost its sense of aesthetics and prefers weightless images over thoughtful artistry. This is the kind of stuff you’d see all the time back when Hollywood was thriving, from figures such as John Ford, Howard Hawks, John Boorman, and Clint Eastwood.
It’s even more astonishing that this is McKinley’s directorial debut. A movie this precise and controlled can only stem from someone who has an innate understanding of how a film functions primarily as a visual medium. Unfortunately, though, some of the images in The Weight are a little bit hard to decipher, especially during murky fireplace conversations or tight action sequences where the camera doesn’t really have a focal point to make us actually see what’s going on. That said, he more than compensates with sharp editing that feels like it was cut by someone who’s been honing his craft for a very long time.
And whaddaya know? McKinley has been working as an editor since the early 2000s, collaborating on projects such as Igby Goes Down, The Shield, Alfie, Blind Justice, Dexter, 17 Again, Charlie St. Cloud, and The Loudest Voice. He’s indeed been at it for a long time. That’s why the editing, by the man himself, for The Weight is so good. He knows exactly when to cut and when to let a shot linger. There isn’t a single scene that feels too long, or too lethargic. The quick cuts as the director contextualizes the era in which the story is set at the top of the movie immediately lure us into a world ravaged by the Great Depression and economic uncertainty.
After that, McKinley lets his protagonist, Samuel Murphy (Ethan Hawke), tell his story. Recently convicted, Murphy has been looking for a way out quicker than the remainder of his sentence, to reunite with his daughter Penny (Avy Berry) before she is sent into foster care. Impressed by his work ethic and resilience, the prison’s warden Clancy (Russell Crowe) tells Murphy that he will have him released early if he can complete one job in five days. The job entails smuggling gold from a mine deep in the wilderness to the warden’s home. Simple enough. Until it isn’t.
And in the grand tradition of the great American adventure films, The Weight contains several bravura sequences as Murphy, alongside inmates Rankin (Austin Amelio), Singh (Avi Nash), Olson (Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen), and an Indigenous runaway named Anna (Julia Jones), hike into the harsh landscapes with bricks of gold on their backs. Of course, nothing goes as planned. They first have to cross a (very old) suspended bridge that certainly won’t be able to carry their load, and devise a plan I shan’t spoil in this review, but that will have you on the edge of your seat, palms sweating with anxiety.
Then, the crew meets a man (Cameron Brady) who knows they’re carrying something valuable, which means they have to outsmart him before he finds them again. That requires another difficult task to perform, and another tense sequence that progressively heightens the suspense, because gold is making Murphy’s men see things that likely weren’t there when they didn’t have such a valuable resource at their disposal. The Weight is actually smart in that regard, drawing three-dimensional characters and wrestling with their inner thoughts as they contemplate exactly what they should do knowing that this mission is likely a death sentence for all of them.
As the action ramps up, the character work also becomes more textured. It allows veterans like Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe to shine in ways they haven’t on screen in a long time (for the latter, it’s been a while since he gave a damn), but it also gives its supporting cast ample opportunity to make a lasting impact in the picture. One of those actors is Julia Jones, whose performance as Anna is so emotive, so raw and deeply human, that we feel for her more than any character in the story. The way that she speaks with her eyes says so much more than her words, and the emotional effect she leaves in the movie lasts even longer than its end credits.
It’s thus a shame that The Weight ends on a rather conventional note, but one can appreciate that it doesn’t fall into the same desolate trappings as The Wages of Fear. However, with such a relentlessly dark structure, to conclude your picture on the happiest of all trajectories feels a bit disingenuous. But then there’s a roll call, which we seldom see in films anymore. How can I dislike a movie that feels of a different time and reminds us what it felt like when America was literally on top of the world for cinema? One thing’s for sure, they certainly don’t make films like The Weight anymore.
