Ethan Hawke is a force of nature in Padraic McKinley’s “The Weight.”
There are few actors today who have demonstrated as consistently as Hawke has that they can do just about anything, but the recently Oscar-nominated performer turns in yet another stirring performance in this tense Western that marks the directorial debut of McKinley, an editor known for his work on “The Good Lord Bird” and “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.”
“The Weight” takes place in 1933 Oregon and follows a single father attempting to get free from a work camp so he can return home to his daughter, which requires Hawke to carry a lot on his shoulders. Some of this is literal, as his character and a group of other prisoners are told they must secretively schlep heavy bricks of gold through the perilous wilderness in exchange for a reduced sentence.
The rest is emotional as, over the course of this gripping thriller, Hawke turns in a word-lite performance that demands he convey his character’s thoughts, feelings and yearning all through the looks on his face.
As the film begins, the Great Depression is at its height, and soon Hawke’s Samuel and his daughter (Avy Berry) are evicted from their apartment. When they try to find a new place to live, they’re intimidated and menaced by cruel cops who, after a scuffle, throw Samuel in prison and send his daughter to a group home.
From there, the film is initially about Hawke navigating life in the camp under the watchful eye of the corrupt Warden Clancy, played by a delightfully scene-stealing and scenery-chewing Russell Crowe. After the two strike up something of a rapport, Clancy offers Samuel a shot at salvation. If he can move all the gold out of a nearby mine, he’ll have his freedom.
That is, if he and the other men he enlists to join him don’t die on the six-day journey.
Watched over by two lawmen wielding guns, Samuel’s potentially doomed posse encounters many unexpected challenges, from a classic rickety bridge scene to an explosive and terrifying shootout when they get followed by mountainfolk. The challenges are frequent and increase in intensity, with the film only rarely letting us rest — when the characters sleep, of course. At the same time, the group begins to grow closer once they realize that they’ll need to help each other survive both the journey and the possibility that something more sinister may be afoot.
Throughout it all, Hawke is mesmerizing. The action scenes are tense and well-executed, though it’s the way he grounds it that makes you feel every setback. Hawke instills Samuel with a deep, graceful gravitas that makes you buy into every beat, whether haunting or thrilling as the film grows more violent.
As Hawk’s stoic visage shifts in ways big and small, you can’t look away for even a second. He holds the film firmly in his hands even when saying few, if any, words. We see in the actor’s expressive eyes alone a pain he’s holding back so that he can focus on the task at hand. So he can get back to his daughter.
Though she isn’t given much to work with, an excellent Julia Jones gives a similarly great performance as an Indigenous woman named Anna who joins the group. She is attempting to escape from a cruel world of her own and, at many points, is the one who saves them despite how horribly most of them treat her. Also outstanding is Avi Nash as Singh, a man ostensibly imprisoned for his socialist beliefs.
While “The Weight” whiffs a bit on accurately depicting the Pacific Northwest (it was shot in Germany), it still captures a sense of looming wonder and dread as this “men on a mission” movie goes deeper into the wilderness.
It instills the film with both a greater tension as well as some more thematic heft as we can feel just how small these people are in the face of the immense natural world, and the uncaring men who inhabit it.
