Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe are the big-name actors in Padraic McKinley’s The Weight, but the real star of the movie is the vast, untouched Bavarian forest location, standing in for Oregon circa 1933.
The Weight opens at Laemmle’s Newhall, Monica, Town Center 5, and NoHo 7 Sept. 18th. Be sure to catch McKinley on Inside the Arthouse with Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge.
On the heels of his acclaimed turn in Blue Moon last year, Ethan Hawke sticks close to the same time period, this time as a World War I veteran in 1933 who’s fallen on hard times. He’s Murphy, a single father who can’t make the rent, but he knows a thing or two about illegal engine modifications. When a seeming case of mistaken identity gets him thrown into prison and on to a chain gang, he’s the kind of guy the wardens like: silent, strong, and all about the work. Getting out so that his young daughter doesn’t have to go into the foster system is the priority.
Along comes the metaphorical devil, to make a deal: Russell Crowe’s baseball-loving Warden Clancy needs some gold relocated from a mine before the FDR government comes along and confiscates it. If Murphy and the cohorts of his choosing – with supervision, of course – can spirit all that gold away on a five-day journey across Oregon, through unforgiving woods, they’ll get released immediately thereafter. The only problem, aside from it being highly illegal and the forest full of dangerous men, is that gold has a tendency to make men who’d otherwise cooperate think only about themselves.
It’s a classic western setup in a more modern era: outlaws with gold braving the wilds on a perilous journey to freedom. But this wild, western state is no desert or high plain – rather, the endless woods feel like Blair Witch territory, waiting to cloud the mind and disorient or mislead casual travelers. Murphy’s war experience comes into play here, as he has a sense of danger that his colleagues do not, including an inclination of who is or isn’t bluffing.
Crowe peaces out of the middle of the movie – he’s there to set the stage and wrap things up with appropriate gravitas, menace, and token bits of quirkiness. (Clancy likes Dr. Pepper, shooting pigeons, and baseball.) McKinley served as consulting producer on the Crowe-directed Poker Face and executive produced and edited Showtime’s The Good Lord Bird with Hawke. Clearly he made a good impression, and they’re here paying back the favor in full. Co-screenwriter Shelby Gaines previously helped Hawke write the Flannery O’Connor biopic Wildcat, while coscribe Matthew Booi wrote the World War I drama Trench 11.
McKinley has been in the business for many years, predominantly as an editor. The Weight is his directorial debut, a genre blend that combines many of his favorite types of film, from chain-gang adventures like Fled to Depression-era drama like The Grapes of Wrath, and anti-heroic spaghetti westerns in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly‘s vein. In Hawke, he has a cinephile star to match – going full-on Clint Eastwood, Murphy is the kind of guy to scowl slightly, speak softly, and pack a mean punch. Plus the things he does with a wedding ring include one of the finest bits of planting and payoff in any recent drama.
Actors were physically weighed down to feel like they were transporting gold bars for real, which makes the title literal, but there’s also the burden of trying to be a good father from behind prison walls, the trauma of war, and the conscience of doing what you have to do to survive among money-hungry and desperate men. The weighting, one might say, is the hardest part. Watching it comes much more easily.
“A rugged period melodrama that draws liberally from esteemed predecessors like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Deliverance, and Sorcerer” – Don Kaye, Moviefone.
“The Weight is the kind of ragtag, band-against-the-odds adventure that used to fill cinemas back in the day.” – Stephen A. Russell, Time Out.