A convict in a labour camp is given a chance to earn his freedom, but it's not going to be easy in Padraic McKinley’s 1933 indie throwback
Sometimes simplicity in storytelling is the best answer. Nobody knew that better than the filmmakers of the 70s, names like Boorman and Friedkin, who gave us films like Deliverance and Sorcerer. Stories of man versus nature, nature being rain, the wilderness, physics or simply the nature of other men. Simple stories of the task at hand and surviving that task. The Weight belongs in this category of film.
Samuel Murphy (Ethan Hawke) is a WWI veteran and widower living in poverty, trying to provide for his daughter, when he’s provoked into a fight and lands himself in a labour camp. Samuel’s skills and intelligence amongst his fellow convicts catch the attention of Warden Clancy (Russell Crowe). Murphy and Clancy bond over Dr Pepper and car engines, and eventually Clancy approaches Murphy with a proposition: lead a team of fellow convicts across the Oregon wilderness transporting gold bricks from a closed mine. Do this and he’ll receive his freedom before his daughter becomes a ward of the state.
The title The Weight could refer to many things: the pressure Murphy feels to get his freedom and be reunited with his daughter before it’s too late, or the burden of being saddled with this ragtag collection of men and the task ahead of them. Or, of course, the weight could refer to the actual weight of a solid gold bar, several solid gold bars. In fact, the inconvenient truth that the impractical yet valuable material also happens to be exceptionally dense and heavy has been examined in several morality tales, from the Brothers Grimm (Hans in Luck) and Aesop (The Two Mules) to Rod Serling (The Twilight Zone’s The Rip Van Winkle Caper). The weight of gold represents the promise of a better life… one that generally doesn’t come because… it’s too damn heavy. The fresh twist here is that the promise of a better life doesn’t necessarily come from the gold’s value, but from what Murphy and his team stand to gain by carrying it.
All of which means when we have a nail-biting scenario like a scene in which a rickety old rope bridge can barely hold one man and one gold bar at a time, resulting in the bricks being tossed to and from Murphy, the stakes aren’t just financial. It’s his freedom and daughter’s future he’s trying to save. Fans of Friedkin's Sorcerer will particularly enjoy this scene.
It’s a beautiful looking film, clearly shot on locations that are faithful to the story that needs to be told. Bavaria seemingly plays the part of Oregon well. Dry, gritty and as deathly serious as the films that inspire it. It’s far from perfect. It very much drags at the start, and there are a handful of tired tropes, many revealed in the back stories of each character, without the characters making much of an impact. Julia Jones’ Anna, a runaway Indigenous woman, feels undeveloped and shoehorned in. Fans of Crowe might be disappointed to learn that his role is much smaller than the billing suggests. That said, he has very much settled into the bellowing man of authority role that seems to have found him lately.
But where The Weight shines is Ethan Hawke’s magnetic presence and the grippingly intense set pieces, be it rope bridges or ambushes. A solidly engaging cinematic experience.
