Seeing The Weight, which had its world premiere tonight at the Sundance Film Festival, it so reminded me of the kind of solid adventure picture studios used to lure major stars to make, and also the type of period heavily testosterone movie we don’t see as much. Hopefully this impressive U.S./Germany production is going to change that.
With elements of 1970s films like Deliverance, Sorcerer and Jeremiah Johnson, not to mention 1967’s seminal Cool Hand Luke, and way back to 1948’s Oscar-winning Bogart classic The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, this proves to be the gritty kind of story that is perfect for a revival, and it also marks yet another high point in the career of Ethan Hawke, who stars. What a year he is having with a recent Best Actor Oscar nomination for Blue Moon, a terrific new FX series in The Lowdown, which made AFI’s Top 10 list and is Emmy bound; and now this riveting and rugged film set in 1933 Oregon.
It was the Depression. Samuel Murphy (Hawke) is just trying to keep things together for his daughter Penny (Avy Berry) and avoid trouble when the law catches up to him and he is snatched away from her, sent to a brutal work camp run by the duplicitous warden, Clancy (Russell Crowe). Promising to his little girl he will be back, it is a rather hopeless situation at this miserable prison in the middle of nowhere. But there might be a way out, and that is when he and some others take Clancy’s crooked offer of smuggling gold bars for him on a treacherous journey through the back country, where danger lurks in many different ways. Desperate to see Penny again, he sets out with fellow prisoners including Rankin (Austin Amelio), Singh (Avi Nash), Amis (Sam Hazeldine), Olson (Lucas Lynggaad Tonnesen), and joined by a tough spirited woman named Anna (Julia Jones). Through mountainous trails, rolling rivers and prospectors who don’t welcome competition, this is one hell ride.
Along the way each personality emerges, with Murphy taking leadership position, while others start cracking. Anna may be be the most solid of the bunch, a take-no-prisoners (so to speak) type who may be sturdier than any of the men. They have to work together to get this gold to its destination, and there is no place more harrowingly dangerous than crossing a rickety bridge too far for this assignment. One of the best sequences, staged thrillingly by director-editor Padraic McKinley, sees Murphy venturing perilously to the center of said wobbly bridge, being thrown one heavy gold bar after the next which he catches in one hand and then must throw to the men on the far side. One false move and its over. But that is just one landmine writers Matthew Booi and Shelby Gaines have dreamed up.
Of course, when you put together a group of people with little hope, the pressure can start to show. Surviving the Great Depression is one thing, this is something else, but the screenwriters manage to sharply draw the unique differences between each member of this ragtag crew as Murphy tries to get to the finish line. There is much more to it in this rousing journey, but though it will remind you of some of those aforementioned ’70s influences (I later read McKinley used some of them for inspiration), it also feels in some ways like a good old fashioned classic Western scenario as well.
Matteo Cocco’s superbly atmospheric and moody cinematography fills the bill perfectly, as do all the period production elements, as well as the excellent music score from Shelby and Latham Gaines. All the actors deliver here, with standouts including Amelio and Jones (the rare female character in this type of story). Crowe is again playing the villain of the piece, and coming right on the heels of his Nazi commandant Hermann Göring in Nuremberg, he manages to make Clancy three-dimensionally slimy in his few scenes. As for Hawke, it must be catnip to get to play a guy like Murphy. This is undoubtedly a role Paul Newman would have coveted in his prime — a little “Luke” a little “Roy Bean,” a little “John Russell.” Hawke makes it his own in a solid portrayal of a man driven to do extreme things for the chance of seeing his daughter again. That aspect gives the role a strong emotional hook that has us rooting for the man to make it out alive.
The Weight may be the strongest prospect at this year’s Sundance for a top distributor looking for something that could play into next year’s awards season, a la current Oscar Best Picture nominee Train Dreams. Let’s hope it finds one. My bet is this is the kind of movie audiences would like to see in theaters again.
Producers are Simon Fields, Nathan Fields, Ryan Hawke, Jonas Katzenstein and Maximilian Leo.
Title: The Weight
Festival: Sundance (Premieres)
Director: Padraic McKinley
Screenwriters: Matthew Booi, Shelby Gaines; story by Booi & Leo Scherman and Matthew Chapman
Cast: Ethan Hawke, Russell Crowe, Julia Jones, Austin Amelio, Avi Nash, Sam Hazeldine, Avy Berry, George Burgess, Lucas Lynggaard Tonnesen
Sales agent: WME Independent
Running time: 1 hr 52 mins
