By Erin Free
Worth: $19.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Ethan Hawke, Russell Crowe, Austin Amelio, Avi Nash, Lucas Lynnggard Tonneson, Julia Jones, George Burgess
Intro:
...a thrilling, moving and thought-provoking tale of desperation and hard-fought survival that will literally leave you breathless.
Get excited – there’s a bracing new talent on the film scene. After working on TV crews and eventually producing and taking the helm on mini-series like Kingdom, Fightworld and Debris, 52-year-old American filmmaker Padraic McKinley now makes his feature film directorial debut with The Weight, and it’s an auspicious bow indeed. McKinley is obviously no kid, and he displays striking levels of assurance and confidence, as well as a deliciously “old school” sensibility that gives his debut a refreshing sense of authenticity and swagger. Without being showy or drawing attention to himself as a filmmaker, Padraic McKinley lets the viewer know beyond any shadow of a doubt that they are in good, firm hands, and that he knows how to run the show.
Set in the bleak, grim days of The Great Depression, The Weight’s taciturn anti-hero is Samuel Murphy (a never-better Ethan Hawke, whose combination of strength and intelligence is perfectly utilised here), a WW1 vet and single father doing his best to raise his young daughter. When the cruelty of circumstance finds Murphy incarcerated on a rural work gang, he is separated from his daughter, and will do anything to get her back. Opportunity comes via Clancy (Russell Crowe is so good here that one laments his current infrequency of leading roles), the tough but seemingly fair boss who runs the work gang. Clancy offers Murphy a way out that involves a brutal trek through miles of remote and harsh wilderness, setting in motion an increasingly cruel and unforgiving train of events.
Beautifully evoking the era with near-Terrence Malick levels of visual poetry, Padraic McKinley – working from a textured, richly nuanced but impressively minimalist original screenplay by Matthew Booi, Shelby Gaines, Matthew Chapman and Leo Scherman that feels like an adaptation of some old, lost literary classic – grabs the viewer by the throat right from the film’s opening scenes, and then never lets go. The pacing is brisk yet somehow stately at the same time, and the desperation of the film’s characters provides a real sense of urgency throughout.
Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe are both sensationally on-point, and they get ripping support from a fine host of actors in eye-catching secondary roles. Austin Amelio (The Walking Dead) steals his scenes as a mean-spirited fellow convict whose motivations are a source of constant unease, while Avi Nash and Lucas Lynnggard Tonneson offer a surprising sweetness as two considerably more right-minded prisoners. Julia Jones is highly effective as Anna, a Native-American woman drawn into the danger, but the real surprise is former NRL and boxing heavyweight George Burgess (a noted mate of Russell Crowe’s), who makes a major impression (after his impressive turn in the recent punchy Crowe starrer Beast) as a brutal man-mountain who makes life very hard for Hawke’s headstrong Samuel Murphy.
The Weight is a tough, uncompromising film – there are plenty of excruciating beatings, and gunfights, as well as moments of real white-knuckle intensity and unsettling injury detail – but everything is exactly where it’s meant to be. Not a moment of the film feels wrong or fudged, and Padraic McKinley’s control of his material is truly impressive. Evoking the cinema of a bygone era without being enslaved by it, The Weight is well and truly the real deal: a thrilling, moving and thought-provoking tale of desperation and hard-fought survival that will literally leave you breathless. And if that wasn’t enough, it even closes out with cast/character title cards, just like in The Great Escape. Now, that’s real class…
