Where there’s gold, there’s greed, and where there’s greed, there’s a story, a story of betrayal, violence, and ultimately, murder.
Not that stories write themselves (they don’t), but leaning into the elemental aspects inherent in the premise can yield remarkably engrossing stories like Padraic McKinley’s feature-length debut, The Weight.
A literal, metaphorical, and even a metaphysical title, The Weight centers on Samuel Murphy (Oscar nominee Ethan Hawke), a down-and-out, unemployed father of one struggling to survive in depression-era America (Oregon state edition). After the Powers-That-Be evict Murphy and his seven-year-old daughter, Penny (Avy Berry), an encounter with thuggish officers of the law sends Murphy to the penitentiary and Penny to a foster home.
Months later, a convicted Murphy hopes to complete his hard-labor sentence, locate his daughter wherever the state has stashed her, and free her before she becomes a permanent ward of the state and thus available for adoption. To help his cause, he ingratiates himself with the warden, Clancy (Russell Crowe), a not atypical member of the prison-industrial system. He speaks softly and punishes even the slightest transgression with his full might.
Ingratiating himself with the warden proves easier than expected. With a background steeped in practical knowledge (cars, planes, but not trains, among others), Murphy fixes the warden’s car and uses the concepts of leverage and Newtonian motion to move a giant rock obstructing a roadway. It’s more than enough to win not just the warden’s temporary favor, but also place him No. 1 on the list for a potentially fatal assignment.
Said assignment involves transporting four backpacks heavy with gold bars down a mountain pass before the recently elected FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) confiscates them and presumably ships them to Fort Knox for safekeeping. It’s not strictly illegal, at least not yet, but it’s not legal either. And with gold fever spreading among miners in the mountain top camp, the only possible solution involves a long, backcountry trek to meet the mine’s representative, Taggert (Alec Newman), at a predetermined location, in exchange for immediate commutations of their respective sentences.
Mixing, not to mention borrowing, plot elements from the French-made Wages of Fear and its American remake, William Friedkin's Sorcerer, with a touch of Deliverance for good measure, The Weight kicks into action when Murphy and several handpicked men, Olson (Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen), Rankin (Austin Amelio), and Singh (Avi Nash), plus two armed guards, Amis (Sam Hazeldine) and Letender (George Burgess), join them on the forced march down the mountain to ensure they don’t stray and the entirety of the gold bullion makes it to the predetermined destination.
As expected, given the premise and the inspirations involved, the path down the mountain isn’t a straight or easy one. Obstacles, both natural and man-made, either slow them down or end their lives prematurely. McKinley expertly stages several set pieces, including the obligatory rickety rope bridge, a river crossing made more dangerous by floating timber, and a tense, nerve-shredding scene near the end of the film involving the convicts, the guards, and a Native-American woman, Anna (Julia Jones), who joins them early on.
The screenplay credited to Shelby Gaines, Matthew Chapman, and Matthew Booi proceeds at a slack-free pace. It doesn’t reinvent the genre, nor does it offer more than a minor twist on a familiar premise. It also doesn’t burrow too far into the characters or their backstories. The convicts each get a spotlight scene, but they never go beyond the surface level.
A Scandinavian immigrant, Olson gets a moment to describe the hows and whys behind his incarceration, while Singh, a self-professed socialist, gets a moment or two to drop some truth bombs about the sorry state of American capitalism. Meanwhile, Rankin functions as the all-purpose irritant. a trope unto himself, he’s a familiar type in crime dramas,
Despite whatever shortcomings the screenplay might have, The Weight benefits from McKinley’s sure hand behind the camera, Matteo Cocco’s lush cinematography (German forests credibly standing in for Oregon’s), and a well-chosen cast playing their respective roles with near perfection, up to and including the smallest of parts. Hawke, of course, gives his next-level best to his performance, opting for a minimalist approach to embodying Murphy. Every conscious choice Murphy makes, and every line of dialogue Murphy utters, is deliberate, the result of closely studying his environment, finding his way through or around every obstacle.
The Weight premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.