Grade: B-
The Weight is a double-edged sword. It can’t seem to win. If the assignment that the lead character is given went perfectly smoothly without incident, that would make for a boring movie. Since things inevitably go wrong, it’s a bit of a derivative, predictable one. I had a friend in high school who once told me, “I want to make an Apollo 13 type movie where people go to space, but everything is just fine. They get to do exactly what they went up to do, nothing bad happens, and everyone’s okay. Wouldn’t that be hysterical?”
I loved the setup, and the premise created anticipation before the usual disaster elements crept in. Ethan Hawke plays Sam Murphy, a widower with a young daughter. Murphy is doing time at a labor camp, with a year left on his sentence. His daughter is about a month away from being eligible for adoption, and Murphy is desperate to get out and reunite with her before a family snatches her up.
If this movie had been made 30 years ago, I could see Russell Crowe playing one of the inmates. But as his appearance has changed with age, he plays Clancy, the boss and overseer of the hard-labor crew. It’s one of my favorite performances of his. Clancy has the power to do what he wants, including signing papers that can eliminate the remainder of somebody’s sentence and set them free early, if he likes them. He likes Murphy, and he’s aware of his predicament. He has an assignment for Murphy: pick three other men on the crew he can trust, and transport some gold through the woods over the course of five days. If he does that, Clancy will sign the papers that release him.
We know, of course, that there will be trials and tribulations along the way. Fair enough. Every good story needs conflict. I’ll grant that. My issue was that so many aspects are too obviously telegraphed. Pretty early on, Murphy gets into a situation that looks dire. I knew he would be okay, because there are scenes in the trailer featuring Hawke that we hadn’t gotten to yet. Another example is a car chase scene, where we cut to a shot of the bottom of an embankment, looking up towards the road. I had to restrain myself from audibly saying, “Here comes the car.”
What worked for me was the cinematography, sound design, and performances. These are some of the better campfire sequences I’ve seen recently. The 1933 countryside is well-filmed. Julia Jones is tough and fierce as an Indigenous runaway who accompanies Murphy and his fellow prisoners. Young British actress Avy Berry is adorable as Murphy’s daughter, and she has good chemistry with Hawke.
The final scene begins with a fun misdirection that turns out to be different from what you’d likely anticipate. The Weight has enough technical elements and performances to admire amid its easily predicted beats. As Hawke ages, he is reminding me of Dennis Quaid and, especially, Harrison Ford in his Indiana Jones heyday. I have enjoyed the trajectory of his career these last few years. In The Weight, Hawke stands firm in a movie that sometimes crumbles beneath him.
Grade: B-
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