The Weight: Ethan Hawke is a Consummate Everyman in this 'Golden' Depression Jail Tale
By Liz Braun
Rating: B+
The Weight is a great yarn, well told. Ethan Hawke is the main attraction in this Depression-era crime thriller, here playing an unassuming everyman character in a tale of desperadoes and stolen gold.
The setting is the Oregon wilderness circa 1933, but the story is contemporary in spirit. Hawke plays Samuel Murphy, a widower with a young daughter. Murphy is a mechanic, among other things, and he and his little girl have fallen upon hard times. They’ve been evicted from their home; a minor scuffle lands Murphy in jail, and his daughter is taken away from him.
Ethan Hawke and Austin Amelio in The Weight.
She will be made a ward of the state and put up for adoption unless he gets out of jail to retrieve her within a month.
Murphy is serving time with a road crew and doing his best to keep his head down, hoping for early release. His work ethic and skills as a mechanic are not lost on the prison boss, Warden Clancy (Russell Crowe), a man who runs his convict crew with a paternal sort of cruelty.
An opportunity arises. The warden needs a few men to undertake a special task: moving gold bricks from a mine through a heavily wooded wilderness near Klamath Falls. The men are taking the gold elsewhere to keep it from being stolen, a common problem after FDR ordered the surrender of all privately held gold as part of a plan to recover from the Depression.
In return for moving the gold to safety, the men will be granted early release. Murphy is put in charge of the dangerous task and told to pick a few men he trusts; each of the men has an agenda, but none so pressing as Murphy’s need to get his daughter back.
So begins an epic trek through an overwhelming landscape.
The men face the full force of nature — cue some intense life-or-death mishaps on land and water — as well as the murderous intent of various villains. As Woody Guthrie sang in Pretty Boy Floyd , some rob you with a six-gun, some with a fountain pen.
The storytelling is delightfully anxiety-provoking. The Weight operates on doubt and speculation, all opaque characters and whiffs of betrayal. Director Padraic McKinley is adept at saturating the goings-on with menace and uncertainty, helped along by a deeply unsettling score from brothers Shelby Gaines (who co-wrote the screenplay) and Latham Gaines,, with cinematography by Matteo Cocco.
But it never hurts to start out with a great story (from screenplay co-writers Matthew Booi, Leo Scherman and Matthew Chapman) and a solid cast that includes Austin Amelio, Avi Nash, Julia Jones and Sam Hazeldine.
When the men talk among themselves the dialogue runs to poverty, justice and desperation. Foreclosed farms are mentioned. Socialism comes up. Somebody points out that it takes the hard work of thousands to support one man’s immense fortune. It's all very present-day.
That Oregon wilderness notwithstanding, the story’s racial and economic inequities may remind you how very little has changed over the last 100 years, and not in a good way. Turns out energetic storytelling is a great way to make that point.
The Weight. Directed by Padraic McKinley, written by Matthew Booi and Shelby Gaines from a story by Booi, Leo Scherman and Matthew Chapman. Starring Ethan Hawke, Russell Crowe, Julia Jones, Austin Amelio, Avi Nash, and Sam Hazeldine. In theatres September 18.