THE WEIGHT opens on an empty road with nothing but wind on the soundtrack. The stillness sold me on one kind of movie, then handed me another. What looks like a Depression-era crime film is really a survival story wearing a smuggler’s coat. Ethan Hawke plays a battle-scarred veteran, and the film shows him almost entirely through other eyes, first his daughter’s, then the men out in the field with him. By the time he says “I told you I’d never been caught,” I’d stopped watching him as a hero and started seeing a man the people around him are still trying to read.
Hawke carries “the weight” of the film. This is the grounded 90s survival story we used to see in theaters, but now end up on a streaming service. Russell Crowe is excellent in his stretches, but he spends most of his screen time on his porch with a Dr. Pepper in hand while Hawke does the heavy lifting out in the wilderness.
THE WEIGHT is Padraic McKinley’s directing debut, but he edited sixteen features before this, from HOMEFRONT to WHEELMAN to PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES. What puzzled me is how often he relies on the fade-to-black technique. The overuse of it brought up my biggest gripe with the film – the pacing. The film starts strong, then loses its footing as it gets lost in the woods, where the tension and reliance on fades to black start to lull audiences to sleep.
Final Thought: Hawke is the reason to see THE WEIGHT. At 55, his resume keeps getting more impressive, and watching him on the big screen has me excited for what comes next – primarily THE LOWDOWN season two starting next month.
THE WEIGHT is in theaters now.