"After they're evicted without warning, hard-working widower Samuel Murphy (Hawke) and his young daughter, Penny (Avy Berry), are accosted by cops while trying to find a new place. Penny is taken away, and Murphy winds up at a prisoner work camp led by the baseball-loving, vaguely sadistic warden Clancy (Russell Crowe). Murphy, a gifted mechanic and a veteran of the Great War, immediately stands out to Clancy as a tough-minded, industrious guy."
"Murphy has another six months to go in the camp, but in one month, Penny will become a ward of the state. Learning of the man's predicament, Clancy offers him a deal: Pick three fellow inmates and transport this gold out of a nearby mining encampment and across 50 miles of treacherous wilderness, and Clancy will sign Murphy's papers for immediate release. Lose even a single gold bar, however, and all of them will be killed."
"But McKinley seduces us into a world that feels fully lived in, and the story doesn't hand-wave away the details. Murphy's engineering know-how gets put on display pretty convincingly, and there's actual historical context for the gold transfer. (In 1933, as part of his efforts to combat the Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order that forbade most private ownership of gold and closed down the"
The Weight is a Depression-era thriller about widower Samuel Murphy and his daughter Penny, separated after an eviction that leads Murphy to a prisoner work camp. The camp warden Clancy offers Murphy immediate release if he and three inmates transport backpacks of gold across fifty miles of treacherous Oregon wilderness, under threat of execution for any lost bar. Ethan Hawke plays Murphy with believable toughness and mechanic skills; Russell Crowe portrays the baseball-loving, vaguely sadistic Clancy. The film emphasizes physical and emotional stakes, period atmosphere, and historical context tied to Roosevelt's 1933 gold ownership order.
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