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It’s 1933, and Hawke’s character, Murphy, has been sent to a penal work camp, having slugged some plainclothes cops. His resourcefulness gets noticed by the warden (Crowe). Desperate to reunite with his little girl (Ava Berry), Murphy accepts a deal from the warden: early release if he helps move four sacks of gold bars from the camp to a rendezvous with a confederate of the warden’s. “Son,” he tells Murphy, “out here I do what I want.”
Gold bars are heavy. The weight (hence the title) needs to be shared. Murphy enlists three fellow prisoners: a South Asian radical (Avi Nash), an annoying blowhard (Austin Amelio — he does have a great mustache), and a not-too-bright Swede (Lucas Lynggaad Tonnesen). They’re overseen on their trek by a pair of brutish guards.
Soon they’re joined by an Indigenous woman, Anna. Julia Jones, who plays Anna, isn’t asked to do much beyond look wary and more intelligent than the guards and the three guys Murphy recruited. The latter isn’t much of a reach. Like Hawke and Crowe, she has real presence.
When last seen on the big screen, Hawke was in the 1940s — playing the Tin Pan Alley lyricist Lorenz Hart (and earning a deserved best actor Oscar nomination), in “Blue Moon.” Moving back a decade, he’s playing a character who’s a foot taller and with a history about as different from Hart’s as corned beef and cabbage is from pastrami on rye. The difference testifies to Hawke’s range. That eager, hatchety handsomeness of his has aged very well. So has that groaning-growl voice. Close your eyes when he tells his fellow prisoners “We’re not here for hospitality,” and it could be Clint Eastwood auditioning for Samuel Beckett.
Onscreen, Crowe was also recently in the 1940s, playing Herman Goering, in “Nuremberg.” Here he’s a whole lot less villainous. This warden loves baseball and has a big gut and easy manner. How easy? He offers Murphy a Dr Pepper.
In case you’re wondering, the Band song that the movie shares a title with is nowhere to be heard. Most of the score consists of ominous industrial-sounding music, which is alternately effective (it is unsettling, as intended) and distracting. But at the end a Lynyrd Skynyrd song plays. Go figure — and no, it’s not “Sweet Home Oregon.”
★★½
THE WEIGHT
Directed by Padraic McKinley. Written by Matthew Booi, Shelby Gaines, Leo Scherman, Matthew Chapman. Starring Ethan Hawke, Russell Crowe, Julia Jones, Austin Amelio, Avi Nash, Lucas Lynggaad Tonnesen, Avy Berry. At Boston Common, Coolidge Corner, Dedham Community, suburbs. 113 minutes. R (some language, violence/bloody images)
Mark Feeney can be reached at [email protected].
