★★★ (3 out of 4)
These days any movie that announces itself as rugged or macho gets dumped in the “dad” bucket, presumably a warning signal for metrosexuals but definitely ghettoized as off trend. “The Weight” is a Depression-era gold heist thriller that defies the pigeonholing, emerging as an unapologetic successor to muscular film efforts unafraid to dangle on the rickety rope bridge between John Wayne and John Wick. On the Emmys, presenter John Mulvaney hilariously yanked the chain of painted-on macho that pumps itself up as “one for the fellas.” That’s Michael Bay in “Transformers” mode. That is not “The Weight,” a sturdy drama that strips away the Hollywood fat to get at the marrow. It misses the mark from time to time, but the effort is much appreciated. The men strike more than a few testosterone poses, but there’s a Native woman, Anna (Julia Jones), along to mock them for it.
Set in the wet Oregon wilderness, looking gorgeous as opposed to the stink of poverty coming off the land when the camera moves in closer, “The Weight” assigns its central role to Ethan Hawke. He brings grit and grace to Samuel Murphy, a single father struggling to feed and clothe his young daughter, Penny (Avy Berry). A fight with the wrong guy, a cop, gets him shipped off to a work camp that looks like something out of “Cool Hand Luke,” when guards torment prisoner Paul Newman for a reported “failure to communicate.”
Predictable? To say the least. But Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe add a piercing vulnerability to the standard chest thumping.
It turns out that Murphy communicates fine with warden Clancy (Russell Crowe doing way less “Gladiator” flexing than usual). If Murphy wants to see his daughter again before she’s fobbed off as a ward of the state, he need only follow a simple order from Clancy. Illegal? You bet. In 1933, FDR has banned the hoarding of gold, which must be sent to the Federal Reserve Bank. That’s not the way Clancy sees it. He wants a taste for himself.
Here’s the deal: In exchange for his freedom and a chance to unite with Penny, Murphy (not coincidentally close to Jack Nicholson’s character named McMurphy in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”) is tasked with transporting bags of gold bars over a 100 miles of steep and rocky terrain that pretty much guarantees disaster. You try crossing a bridge or fjording a river with that tonnage.
Luckily, Murphy is not alone. The warden lets him organize help from other prisoners— Singh (Avi Nash), Olson (Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen) and Rankin (Austin Amelio)—also eager to break their chains. With Bavaria well cast as the Pacific Northwest wilderness, the Murphy team begins its mission impossible. I’ll say. Lose one bar and you’re dead.
Predictable? To say the least. But director Padraic McKinley and writers Matthew Chapman, Matthew Booi and Shelby Gaines push hard on the momentum pedal. And Hawke and Crowe spar with an eye to character detail you don’t see in many “dad” movies. This one gives you something to chew on. To be a man of action isn’t a dirty word when Hawke and Crowe add a piercing vulnerability to the standard chest thumping. “The Weight” encourages audiences to think through its themes instead of dismissing them as filler between the beatdowns. That makes all the difference.