As a parent, I know all about the weight of parental responsibility. Every decision I make takes that responsibility into consideration, because a bad one can have disastrous repercussions for myself and my child. The Weight is about the worst possible outcome, where a father’s child is unfairly taken away from him because of his heat-of-the-moment reaction. The movie uses that setup to delve into other forms of societal injustice, highlighting how little has changed from one hundred years ago to today. It’s an angry movie at its core, but with good reason.
Four years into the Great Depression, Samuel Murphy (Ethan Hawke) can’t support himself and his daughter Penny (Avy Berry). While he boasts to her that he can do everything from rebuilding an engine to framing a house, his skills are of little use when nobody’s hiring. Murphy’s other problem is that he’s an honest man. When a friendly neighbor asks him to look at their car, he can’t bring himself to trick them into paying for unnecessary repairs. Penny is wise beyond her years and reasons that he could have broken something and then fixed it. She’s right, but Murphy’s not a con man.
Murphy tries to maintain a routine with Penny, including going to church on Sundays. There, he sheepishly passes the donation plate along without contributing. Unfortunately, being out provides their landlord the opportunity to evict them without a fight. Christian values don’t extend beyond church, apparently. When Murphy’s neighbor offers to buy their radio, Murphy agrees. When the neighbor’s son asks for Penny’s Teddy Bear, Penny gives it to him as a rebuke to her father. If he was fine with giving up something that was mom’s, then she shouldn’t need her favorite toy. (I can’t recall an explanation offered for mom’s absence.)
The latter part of the day proves to be fateful. While Murphy and Penny are looking for a room to rent on the seamier side of town, they’re approached by a group of men in a darkened alley. Two of them confront Murphy, who logically suspects they’re going to rob and/or kill them. When one asks Penny strange questions, Murphy responds by throwing punches. Turns out the men are police officers who just wanted to make trouble, because they can.
Murphy is given a long prison sentence and Penny is sent to a boarding school. In an effort to get out early, Murphy joins a work detail tasked with making roads in the mountainous Oregon forest (represented by southeastern Germany). The work is arduous, but each day counts as two days served. Murphy keeps his distance from the others, but pipes up doing a late night card game. Rankin (Austin Amelio), a racist clown, keeps insisting that he’s better than Singh (Avi Nash) and Olson (Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen) because he’s white and native born. (Is this 1933 or 2026?) Murphy can tell Rankin’s bluffing, and states as such to Olsen. Murphy intentionally making an enemy out of Rankin shows that maybe there’s more to Murphy than he’s shown so far.
The chain gang is lorded over by Warden Clancy (Russell Crowe), who insists that everyone who abides by his rules will stay out of trouble. When they’re blocked by a huge boulder in their path, Clancy gives his crew a choice. Either move the rock so they can play baseball on Sunday, or work through the weekend. Clancy makes it clear that if they can’t make the former happen, he’ll have to forfeit their game.
While Murphy watches, the men struggle to budge the rock an inch. Clancy senses that Murphy can help and tells him how he’d really prefer to have Sunday off. Message received, Murphy instructs two men to move the boulder with a technique that would make Archimedes proud. Clancy is impressed and invites Murphy over to get a bead on him. Murphy proves he’s capable by fixing Clancy’s car, and then reveals that.if he doesn’t get out in a month, he may never see his daughter again.
Recognizing Murphy’s desperation, Clancy offers him a deal. If Murphy and three other men carry gold bars from a closing mine operation through the forest to a drop-off spot in five days, Clancy will approve all of them for early release. Murphy can’t trust Clancy, but has no choice because if he doesn’t get out soon, he may lose Penny forever.
Joining Murphy, Rankin, Singh and Olsen are two mining company brutes, Letender (George Burgess) and Amis (Sam Hazeldine) who will make sure the prisoners don’t get ideas. A last-minute addition is a Native American named Anna (Julia Jones), who opportunistically sees the group as her armed escort out of the dismal mining camp. The terrain is expectedly rugged, but when a creepy backwoods type comes along, Murphy senses that trouble is afoot and urges that they cross a stream to cover their trail. Rankin uses the situation to almost kill Murphy, but fails when Anna intervenes.
The table is now set for a perilous journey for Murphy and the rest, and their survival depends upon everyone–prisoners and guards–working together. Problem is, trust is running short within the group, leaving all of them open to danger in the form of shadowy thieves, the landscape and even each other.
Recommendation
If The Weight had resigned itself to being about a prisoner accepting a dangerous job in order to reunite with his daughter, it would still be a great movie. The scenes set in the woods, where our “heroes” trudge towards freedom, are white-knuckle good. The movie builds tension to an almost unbearable degree the old fashioned way, through technical craft, location and acting. The confrontations that fill the story have a rawness and immediacy to them that you rarely see in Hollywood productions. There was never a moment when I didn’t believe these guys weren’t actually in a forest, covered in dirt and sweat and under constant duress.
Being a lean-and-mean survival thriller isn’t all that The Weight wants to be, however. It’s also a “past is prologue” narrative that regularly draws parallels between 1933 and today. It tells us plainly that our current societal problems are long-standing and systemic, not something unique to our times. It asserts that poverty, racism, nativism, unchecked law enforcement and the exploitation of the poor are longstanding traditions in American society, and the only way the downtrodden can overcome those obstacles is by working together. (By the way, if you’re triggered by the mention of socialism, you probably want to steer clear of this film.)
The movie is very open about its leftist sympathies, but it isn’t a polemic. Instead, it seeks to enlighten us between action sequences, with the hope that the plight of the characters will stir something within us. The balance it strikes between being exciting and thoughtful reminded me of William Friedkin’s Sorcerer and Andrei Konchalovsky’s Runaway Train, which puts it in good company.
Ethan Hawke portrays father and prisoner Samuel Murphy, another role that allows him to show off his versatility (see The Black Phone, Blue Moon and The Northman). Hawke wisely plays Murphy as close to the vest, an intelligent man picking his spots. His transformation from a gruff but doting father at the beginning into the determined survivalist in the end makes this one of Hawke’s most complete and riveting performances, even better than his turn as Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart last year.
The other big name in the cast is Russell Crowe, embracing yet another bad guy role with gusto. What’s fascinating about Crowe’s late-career turn towards villany is how he leverages his now paunchy appearance to his advantage (see Nuremberg, Netflix’s Unibomber, Unhinged). There’s an early scene where he leans against a car and sticks his gut out prominently, a way of communicating to everyone around him that he’s in charge and not to be messed with. In another scene, one of Crowe’s jowly cheeks nearly fills the screen. Roles like these show he’s become the ideal actor for portraying evil as middle-aged decay, and extremely captivating while doing so.
After decades spent as an editor in both film and television, The Weight is Padraic McKinley’s first feature film as a director. The film was made on a micro budget, but the resulting practical approach is what makes the film such a dark and foreboding experience. The film’s imagery is routinely breathtaking, from its Depression-era muddiness to its shadowy forest settings. The film’s aesthetic recalls last year’s Train Dreams, and cinematographer Matteo Cocco deserves recognition for his work here. I also want to acknowledge Matthew Booi and Shelby Gains for their screenplay, a masterclass of visual storytelling.
The Weight is the best survival thrillers of recent memory, filled with gripping action sequences, exceptional acting and incredible scenic photography. Ethan Hawke confirms that he’s one of the best actors working today. More political than the average Hollywood film, the movie speaks openly about the benefits of brotherhood–and revolution. One of the best films of the year. Highly recommended.
Analysis
Since the Covid pandemic was officially declared over in 2023, movie critics have been on the lookout for films that best represent our world today. Two films that so far meet that distinction were both released last year, Eddington (2025) and One Battle After Another (2025). If you’re curious how I felt about them, please use the links above.
One film that I believe also deserves to be included in this category is, of course, The Weight. This isn’t because I feel it’s a better or worse movie than either Eddington or OBAA. I avoid comparing movies because every one of them must stand on its own as a work of art. The fact that I didn’t care for Eddington or liked OBAA has no bearing on The Weight, and vice versa. These three movies have completely different aesthetic approaches, themes, acting styles, and so on.
Why I’m so high on The Weight (ha) is that its story depicts how a revolution forms and works. It does this on a small scale, with prisoners banding together to overthrow their evil oppressors and emerge victorious. The Weight isn’t the first movie that does this, but how it goes about it is ingenious.
The revolution depicted in the movie begins with the protagonist, Samuel Murphy. He’s a smart man who can do almost anything, but his problems are twofold. First, he’s living in the thick of the Great Depression, meaning that nobody has money to hire him. Second, he’s the sole provider for his daughter, Penny. He’s a decent man who wants to teach her the difference between right and wrong, living one’s life according to the principle, and so on. The timing of his lessons couldn’t be worse.
Murphy is doing his best until those in power make life extremely difficult for him and his daughter. His landlord evicts him, bad cops arrest him, his daughter is taken away and an unsympathetic judge convicts him. Murphy’s life has changed dramatically in short order and he’s powerless to stop it.
Murphy initially approaches prison as if he were a free man. He minds his own business, works hard and stays out of trouble. Unfortunately, being a hard-working prisoner will only get him so far. Murphy can get an early release, but by then it will be too late to find his daughter.
As a result, Murphy falls into the same trap that many individualists find themselves in when the deck is stacked against them. He agrees to help Warden Clancy in exchange for an expedited release, with full knowledge that Clancy is not to be trusted. Murphy has no choice because Clanchy holds all the cards and society offers no other option besides riding out his sentence. So he agrees to Clancy’s deal and hopes that he’s wrong.
Ironically, it’s during Murphy’s forest trek that his perception of the world shifts dramatically. He’s forced to look to others for help and sees that he’s not the only one who’s been railroaded by the powerful. Singh is a political prisoner. Olson took justice into his own hands. Rankin endured brutal orphanage conditions. Anna was forced to live in an institution dedicated to erasing her Native American heritage. All of them are where they are as a result of being oppressed.
For most of the journey, Murphy is focused on his survival. If he delivers the gold to Taggert on time, he’ll see Penny again. But Olson’s suspicious death makes Murphy realize that he, Rankin, Singh, Olson and Anna were patsies from the beginning. Clancy’s and Taggert’s plan was for Murphy and the rest to take the fall for the missing gold. They would conveniently disappear while Clancy, Taggert, Letender and Amis split it amongst themselves.
The interesting thing about Olson’s death is that it doesn’t open Murphy’s eyes, because he always suspected the plan could go south. The pivotal twist in the movie arrives when Rankin switches sides. All along, he believed that he would be spared because he was a good ole boy from the backwoods, same as Letender and Amis. Rankin was a proud nativist, unsparing in his racist comments towards Singh and Anna. He even tried to kill Murphy because he viewed Murphy’s intelligence as a threat. However, after witnessing Olson’s murder, it hits him that he’ll be killed as well. In other words, Rankin becomes woke and joins the revolution.
In the climactic scene, Murphy tries to save Anna from Letender, but both are outmatched. Rankin risks his life to save them because he knows that he needs Murphy’s smarts to get himself out of this situation alive. And he’s proved right when Murphy gets the gold from Taggert and secures Rankin’s freedom from Clancy.
In short, The Weight shows that a revolution needs more than social justice warriors like Olson, Singh and Anna to succeed. It needs smart people sitting on the sidelines like Murphy to offer their skills to the effort. The revolution also needs selfish people like Rankin to see the light and take up arms as well. The movie says that a revolution must convince people who never thought they were affected by an unjust society to stand up and fight for everyone’s rights.
So how does this movie speak to today? Ethan Hawke joined the cast in February 2025, only weeks after President Trump officially became president a second time. Hawke’s brother was directly involved with financing the production. Since movies do have a long gestation process, the political environment they are released in is often a coincidence. But I doubt that’s the case here. Hawke and the filmmakers made this movie with the intention of sending a message to the fence-sitters audience. Whether it makes a difference is anyone’s guess, but nobody can fault Hawke for trying.
With all of the above in mind, The Weight is as overtly political as both Eddington and OBAA. I can’t think of another movie this year that speaks directly to our current moment like this one.
About that ending
I admit to initially being taken aback by The Weight’s extremely happy ending. I fully expected more of the prisoners being killed. However, they strike a deal with Clancy that allows everyone to go free with gold–including Clancy! The last shot is Murphy and Penny driving happily into a sunset in a brand new car, with Penny being reunited with her Teddy Bear. The only way things could have turned out better for the two of them is a meeting with FDR in the White House.
It wasn’t until later that I understood what the ending meant to convey. It symbolizes the promised reward for those who played an active role in a revolution. When those in power are overthrown, those who fought on the side of justice will be able to live in peace and harmony. If I ever fight on behalf of a revolution, I better get a new car out of the deal.
