The Weight (2026) Vertical/Drama-Adventure RT: 115 minutes Rated R (language, some violence/bloody images) Director: Padraic McKinley Screenplay: Matthew Booi and Shelby Gaines Music: Latham Gaines and Shelby Gaines Cinematography: Matteo Cocco Release date: September 18, 2026 (US) Cast: Ethan Hawke, Russell Crowe, Julia Jones, Austin Amelio, Avi Nash, Lucas Lynggaad Tonneson, George Burgess, Cameron Brady, Avy Berry, Alec Newman, Sam Hazeldine.
Rating: ***
We live in a time when filmmakers consistently try to outdo one another by going bigger and costlier with their movies. It doesn’t mean they’re any good. Why, the last Avatar movie cost about $400M to make and look how that turned out. It just goes to show that budget and quality are not proportional.
The takeaway should be this: you don’t need hundreds of millions of dollars to make a decent movie. Look at The Weight. It turned out just fine. I don’t have an exact figure, but I know it isn’t mammoth-sized. Director Padraic McKinley, making his feature film debut, strips it down to the bare bones to make a rugged adventure about rough men braving rougher elements in a quest for survival and freedom.
Set in Depression-era Oregon, Samuel Murphy (Hawke, The Black Phone) is a widowed dad doing the best he can to take care of his cute moppet of a daughter (Berry). An unfortunate run-in with some plain clothes cops lands him in a prison work camp where even with time off for good behavior, he still won’t get out in time to prevent his daughter from becoming a ward of the state.
All looks bleak until the no-BS warden Clancy (Crowe, A Beautiful Mind) makes Murphy an offer he doesn’t dare refuse. He promises to sign his release papers in exchange for carrying a load of gold from point A to point B through an unforgiving wilderness. Did I say carry? I meant smuggle. The mine owner (Newman, The Boys in the Boat) intends to sneak it away before the government seizes it in the name of FDR. He needs a few mules to do the heavy lifting. That’s where Murphy and three other inmates- Rankin (Amelio, When No One Sees Us), Singh (Nash, Secret Service) and Olson (Tonnesen, The Rain)- come into it. They’re tasked with transporting the precious cargo and God help them if anything happens to it.
The guys are joined on their six-day journey by two guards and Anna (Jones, The Twilight Saga), an Indigenous woman who just wants to escape the mining camp. It’s a treacherous trek as the group encounters the usual pitfalls like a raging river near a logging camp, a rickety wooden bridge that can’t hold much weight and strangers who might be after their gold. They also fight amongst themselves as tensions begin to boil over.
I primarily thought of two other movies while watching The Weight: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) and Sorcerer (1977). They’re all similar on the surface; however, they differ in terms of intent. The John Huston classic deals with the insidious nature of greed. The Weight barely touches upon it. Nobody seems to be trying to steal the gold for him/herself. The criminally underrated William Friedkin film deals directly with redemption with its four antiheroes trying to make up for their past wrongs. That’s not really a consideration for the guys in The Weight. They want their freedom, that’s all. They’ll do what it takes to get it. That’s the thing about McKinley’s film. It doesn’t deal with any deep existential themes. It simply is what it is and that’s it.
I noticed something interesting about Ethan Hawke in The Weight. The 55YO actor is starting to look like Harrison Ford. His whole demeanor throughout the ordeal and some of the facial expressions, I couldn’t help but think of the Indiana Jones star. Could this be the beginning of Hawke as an action hero? In any event, he does a good job in the lead. He brings a bit of dramatic heft with his desire to get back to his daughter. Before his unfair incarceration, his life was only about taking care of the little girl. He loves her beyond all else and she him. To the actor’s credit, he doesn’t get all maudlin and sappy about it.
Crowe is also quite good as the warden, a fellow you’re never quite sure about. Is he a good guy or a bad one? Is the offers he makes really out of altruism or are there ulterior motives. Although he doesn’t spend a lot of time on-screen, the question lingers in the mind. At least it did with me. Jones does a decent job as a tough woman among tough men. She more than holds her own against all the sweaty testosterone.
One of the most interesting things about The Weight is the refusal to paint any of the inmates as truly bad people even though Rankin admits to being a career criminal (he never specifies what he did). The other men are there for political reasons; Singh is an admitted Socialist and Olson had the gall to stand beside his fellow farmers against unfair treatment by the law. So we’re not talking about murderers or rapists here. They’re basically decent men who fall prey to the cruel hand of fate.
McKinley makes excellent use of the natural locations in Viechtach, Germany (standing in for Oregon). It gives The Weight a sense of realism a studio set would not. He also keeps things moving at a good pace with a neat but not entirely unexpected twist at the end. It has plenty of action and adventure. It has a well-written screenplay by Matthew Booi and Shelby Gaines who never succumb to the temptation to dumb things down. It’s smart without showing off intellectually. It’s just a damn good flick!
