In rural, Depression-era Oregon, Samuel Murphy – another fantastic performance by Ethan Hawke — is a jack-of-all-trades worker and single father to a precocious young daughter named Penny. Penny loves her teddy bear and loves it when her dad drives fast on the country roads. Unfortunately, Samuel is involved in a fight with undercover policemen and is subsequently sent to a prison camp some miles away, at the outset of Padraic McKinley’s directorial debut, “The Weight.”
As a “jack-of-all-trades” and a World War I vet, Samuel can repair cars, and it doesn’t take him long to curry favor with Warden Clancy – Russell Crowe, continuing to nicely ease into his elderly tough-guy persona – and repair his expensive Ford. Furthermore, Clancy watches Samuel engineer the removal of a boulder so large even a group of prisoners is unable to make it budge.
So, in exchange for a reduction of their sentences, Clancy enlists Samuel and a group of four others – which Samuel gets to choose – to undertake a dangerous mission and recover a large supply of gold bricks from a nearby mine. With President Roosevelt’s removal of the United States from the gold standard in 1933, the federal government is in the process of closing all gold mines and seizing the loot. Hoping to beat the feds to the gold stash, Clancy uses his prisoners – likely deemed to be “expendable” – for such an arduous undertaking.
What follows begins as a predictable romp through the wilderness, with tensions rising amongst the prisoners, and the occasional meetup with others. But it doesn’t take long for Matthew Booi’s and Shelby Gaines’ original screenplay to differentiate itself from standard Hollywood fare. “The Weight” turns out to be one of this year’s excellent films, and yet another showcase for Ethan Hawke – perhaps the greatest actor of my generation. Samuel Murphy couldn’t be more dissimilar to New York songwriter Lorenz Hart from last year’s “Blue Moon.” But Hawke brings both characters to life in a way that few others can. Watching him act with his eyes and facial twitches here is a real treat, particularly considering the Lorenz Hart character babbled on incessantly about anything and everything that entered his mind.
Another of the joys of “The Weight” is the immediate establishment of the peripheral characters. Much as in “One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest,” it doesn’t take long for us to determine which of the guys is the bigot, which is the leader type, which is the weakest, and so forth. So, when tensions rise as the journey persists, we’re not surprised by any of their actions. Nothing they do seems to come out of left field, as it were.
In an interesting side story, the group “adopts” a young indigenous woman named Anna (Julia Jones, from “Twilight”), who is on the lam after escaping one of those conditioning schools which were used to assimilate Native Americans into Eurocentric culture and to disavow their own heritage. She provides Samuel a sounding board, as the two become fast friends. She’s an interesting character, albeit not completely necessary. Again, Hawke acts more in “The Weight” when he doesn’t speak than when he does.
It’s always telling to compare new films to those which have gone before it, and “The Weight” is reminiscent of a couple others from my lifetime. First, John Boorman’s 1972 classic “Deliverance.” The tension of that film wasn’t so much the oft-ballyhooed wilderness rape scene, but the frank discussions that came after. Such discussions occur here amongst the men when they meet up with a local miner. How much information should they share? Should they kill him so he doesn’t reveal their presence in the woods? When he returns the following day – apparently with other locals – should they change direction? Steal their boats to hasten their getaway? It’s refreshing to see these concerns comprise what might otherwise have turned into a predictable tough-guy flick.
At the conclusion of “The Weight,” I was pleasantly reminded of David Mackenzie’s great 2016 modern-day western “Hell or High Water” – when Samuel presents his ingenious and watertight plan to recover some of the gold bricks for himself and secure his freedom. Chris Pine’s character in “Hell or High Water” also had an impervious plot – in his case, to illegally steal money from the bank foreclosing his family farmland.
It’s always exhilarating to watch films in which the narrative stays one step ahead of the viewer. “The Weight” is one such film. Thanks to McKinley’s benevolent direction – and yes, it’s hard to believe this is his first film – the evenhanded screenplay, and another mesmerizing turn by Ethan Hawke, “The Weight” takes its place alongside “The Rivals of Amziah King” and “Crime 101” as one of this year’s best pictures. I hope this one isn’t forgotten come Oscar time, particularly for Hawke.
Since 2014’s “Boyhood,” Hawke has given one award-worthy performance after another – including “Born to be Blue,” “Maudie,” “First Reformed,” and “Blue Moon.” And no two of his characters have been similar. His acting style refuses to be pigeonholed. I used to say Philip Seymour Hoffman was the greatest actor of my generation. But he’s been gone 12 years now. Hawke has assumed that title in my mind. It’s hard to believe he’s never won an Oscar. Perhaps that changes this year.
