They put The Weight right on us (CREDIT: Vertical)

Starring: Ethan Hawke, Russell Crowe, Julia Jones, Austin Amelio, Avi Nash, Lucas Lynggaad Tonnesen, George Burgess, Cameron Brady, Avy Berry, Alec Newman, Sam Hazeldine, Jeffrey Lee Hallman, Dylan Page, Peter Lewys Preston, Caspar Steinbeck

Director: Padraic McKinley

Running Time: 113 Minutes

Rating: R for Language and Some Shockingly Intense Violence

Release Date: September 18, 2026 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Samuel Murphy (Ethan Hawke) has found himself in a greatly depressing situation, which is appropriate given the setting of his movie, i.e. 1933 Oregon. After he and his young daughter Penny (Avy Berry) are evicted, a violent misunderstanding with the police leads to Murphy being arrested and placed in a hard labor camp. There’s a chance he can be released in a few months with good behavior, but that’s not soon enough to be reunited with his daughter before she’ll become a ward of the state. So the man in charge of the labor camp, Warden Clancy (Russell Crowe), offers him an out: he’ll sign the papers granting Murphy an even earlier release as long as Murphy does a certain favor for him. Specifically, he must assemble a small crew of his fellow convicts and transport gold bars to a designated dropoff point. It sure sounds dangerous, possibly even deadly, and probably not exactly legal. But Murphy never doubts that it’s his best hope to get Penny back in his arms.

What Made an Impression?: Surely There’s Got to Be a Better Way!: You know those rickety rope bridges hanging between cliffs that are just waiting to have their wooden planks scooched down into the abyss? I always assumed that they were invented for the Indiana Jones movies and their ilk, but maybe they are a real thing after all. The Weight would certainly like us to believe that they existed in the early 20th century Pacific Northwest wilderness, as there’s a marvelously tense set piece in which Murphy and his crew realize that the bridge they’re crossing is not going to hold the weight of a man and all the gold he’s lugging around in his backpack. So Murphy stands in the middle while someone on one end tosses him one bar at a time, and then he tosses each bar one at a time to the other end. Every little movement is a life-or-death proposition, doubly so. One false step could be the end for Murphy, and furthermore, Clancy has assured them that losing just one of the bars means they’ve failed the entire mission. It’s the movie’s entire dramatic tension captured in one white-knuckle sequence.
Flying Gracefully Forever: Ethan Hawke is one of those actors that I’ll see in basically anything. (That preference was solidified during his turn in 2010s genre flicks like The Purge and Sinister.) The Weight is just the latest evidence of the wisdom of that attitude. There’s one scene in particular when Hawke as Murphy figures out how to move a massive boulder off the road that makes it abundantly clear that we’re in the care of someone who knows exactly what he’s doing. It’s a perfect distillation of his team player instincts, as he makes everyone else in the ensemble exponentially better.
Never Comfortable Again: The Weight is a constantly damp movie, as the gold transporters must traverse multiple river crossings and occasionally sleep under unforgiving rainstorms. And it’s not like they brought any change of clothes for the journey. This isn’t exactly the sort of thing I’m in the mood for in September, as its overcast outlook threatens that the end of the month will give way to a perpetually cloudy autumn. It’s a well-made movie, for sure, but you just gotta make sure you’re equipped to handle that lack of sunshine.

The Weight is Recommended If You Like: Forrest hiking, Pre-seat belt era car chases, Climactic dealmaking

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Teddy Bears