{"id":15046,"date":"2026-09-18T23:23:03","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T03:23:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=15046"},"modified":"2026-09-18T23:23:03","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T03:23:03","slug":"the-weight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2026\/09\/18\/the-weight\/","title":{"rendered":"The Weight"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Weight<\/strong> (2026)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Vertical\/Drama-Adventure\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 115 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, some violence\/bloody images)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Padraic McKinley\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Matthew Booi and Shelby Gaines\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Latham Gaines and Shelby Gaines\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Matteo Cocco\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 18, 2026 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Ethan Hawke, Russell Crowe, Julia Jones, Austin Amelio, Avi Nash, Lucas Lynggaad Tonneson, George Burgess, Cameron Brady, Avy Berry, Alec Newman, Sam Hazeldine.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0We live in a time when filmmakers consistently try to outdo one another by going bigger and costlier with their movies. It doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The takeaway should be this: you don\u2019t need hundreds of millions of dollars to make a decent movie. Look at The Weight<\/strong>. It turned out just fine. I don\u2019t have an exact figure, but I know it isn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Set 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\u2019t get out in time to prevent his daughter from becoming a ward of the state.<\/p>\n

\u00a0All looks bleak until the no-BS warden Clancy (Crowe, A Beautiful Mind) makes Murphy an offer he doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s 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\u2019re tasked with transporting the precious cargo and God help them if anything happens to it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The 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\u2019s a treacherous trek as the group encounters the usual pitfalls like a raging river near a logging camp, a rickety wooden bridge that can\u2019t hold much weight and strangers who might be after their gold. They also fight amongst themselves as tensions begin to boil over.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I primarily thought of two other movies while watching The Weight<\/strong>: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) and Sorcerer (1977). They\u2019re 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<\/strong> 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\u2019s not really a consideration for the guys in The Weight<\/strong>. They want their freedom, that\u2019s all. They\u2019ll do what it takes to get it. That\u2019s the thing about McKinley\u2019s film. It doesn\u2019t deal with any deep existential themes. It simply is what it is and that\u2019s it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I noticed something interesting about Ethan Hawke in The Weight<\/strong>. The 55YO actor is starting to look like Harrison Ford. His whole demeanor throughout the ordeal and some of the facial expressions, I couldn\u2019t 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\u2019s credit, he doesn\u2019t get all maudlin and sappy about it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Crowe is also quite good as the warden, a fellow you\u2019re 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0One of the most interesting things about The Weight<\/strong> 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\u2019re not talking about murderers or rapists here. They\u2019re basically decent men who fall prey to the cruel hand of fate.<\/p>\n

\u00a0McKinley makes excellent use of the natural locations in Viechtach, Germany (standing in for Oregon). It gives The Weight<\/strong> 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\u2019s smart without showing off intellectually. It\u2019s just a damn good flick!\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Weight (2026)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Vertical\/Drama-Adventure\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 115 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, some violence\/bloody images)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Padraic McKinley\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Matthew Booi and Shelby Gaines\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Latham Gaines and Shelby Gaines\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Matteo Cocco\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 18, 2026 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Ethan Hawke, Russell Crowe, Julia Jones, Austin Amelio, Avi Nash, Lucas Lynggaad Tonneson, George Burgess, Cameron Brady, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15047,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-now-playing"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/The-Weight-POSTER.jpg?fit=620%2C930&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15046"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15051,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15046\/revisions\/15051"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}