Review: 'The Weight' is a riveting heist thriller propelled by Ethan Hawke's performance as a dad at the end of his rope

Ethan Hawke has been a working actor so long, over more than 100 roles in movies and TV, that we almost take him for granted — until he breaks out a performance, like he does in director Padraic McKinley’s heist drama “The Weight,” that reminds you how devastatingly good he can be.

Hawke plays Samuel Murphy, who in 1933, in the middle of the Great Depression, is struggling to keep a roof over his head and that of his little girl, Penny (Ava Berry). One day, after Murphy and Penny are evicted from their apartment, Murphy has an unfortunate encounter with some unsympathetic Portland police, and he ends up being sent away to prison.

At a labor camp in Deschutes County, the warden, J.J. Clancy (Russell Crowe), lays down the law: Work two days, get one day taken off your sentence. Murphy does the math, and sees there’s no way to get enough time deducted to get out before the state puts Penny up for adoption. 

Clancy offers Murphy an alternative, one that’s as dangerous as it is illegal. Clancy knows someone at a nearby gold mine, Taggert (Alec Newman), who wants to move several gold bars over 100 miles of Oregon forest and hills, to keep the FDR administration from confiscating it. Clancy tells Murphy to pick three inmates he trusts — and if they finish the job, Clancy will sign the paperwork to release them. Murphy may not believe Clancy and Taggert will live up to their end of the bargain, but he’s got little choice but to agree.

Murphy picks his three accomplices: Rankin (Austin Amelio), who’s on the most recent of many prison stays; Singh (Avi Nash), a socialist intellectual; and Olson (Lucas Lynggard Tønnesen), a Scandinavian immigrant. They’re joined on the journey by two of Taggert’s men, Amis (Sam Hazeldine) and Letender (George Burgess), and by Anna (Julia Jones), an Indigenous woman at the mining camp, who may be the best person to get them through the woods alive.

McKinley, a TV director making his feature debut, evokes some of the classics in the canon of desperate men moving contraband (think Henri-Georges Clouzot’s “The Wages of Fear” or William Friedkin’s remake, “Sorcerer”), as the men have to confront natural obstacles and what’s more treacherous: other men.

At the center is Hawke, grim and grave, the determination to complete this task and get back to his daughter etched in every crevice of his face. Hawke doesn’t talk a lot here — a contrast to his Oscar-nominated performance in “Blue Moon,” as the overly verbose Lorenz Hart — and he makes every motion and syllable speak volumes.

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‘The Weight’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, September 18, in several theaters. Rated R for language and some violence/bloody images. Running time: 113 minutes.