Jumping back into the review fray with Vertical’s acquisition out of Sundance, The Weight. This Ethan Hawke historical drama premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, where it was eventually acquired by Vertical for distribution, landing on a September release date. This didn’t used to be a strong month for releases, but every once in a while somebody throws a strong blockbuster into September, confusing people and making them think it’s suddenly a valid month for consumers. Really, what usually happens is they have a title so big it doesn’t matter where it opens because it’s going to draw people in anyway. The Weight, sadly, is not one of those movies and might completely miss the audience boat.
But I wanted to jump in on it because Vertical never gives me audio description with my screeners, yet from what I can tell, they provide it theatrically nearly all the time. Then it never matriculates anywhere else. So if I don’t point this out, talk about this film, and get people who are blind and low vision to jump off the couch and run with their sticks to the theater, they may never hear the audio description for this film ever again. At least until Amazon randomly throws a synthetic voice track on top of it at some point in the future. But that’s never a guarantee. And it would also be synthetic. So, gross.
Ethan Hawke plays Samuel Murphy, a criminal who is sentenced to what seems to be a rather unconventional prison work camp, where the inmates have a bit more wandering freedom. After helping Warden Clancy, played by Russell Crowe, with his car because Samuel is good with cars, Clancy offers him the opportunity to participate in an errand. They need men they can trust. Good men. Strong men. Men like Samuel. Why would he be so interested in this job? Because when he was arrested, it separated him from his daughter, Penny, who is now potentially going to become a ward of the state unless Samuel can get out in time to rescue her from the clutches of the government.
So he signs up to go on this journey with a couple of other randomly selected convicts, and it turns out it’s going to be a heavy trip. Thus, the title, The Weight. This takes place in Oregon during the Great Depression, with a fortune in gold needing to be transported out of a remote mine. These good-natured prison guards are basically having the convicts safely escort the gold before any troublemakers step into their path and come after it, because rumor has it that’s exactly what’s been happening. There are some scoundrels in the neighborhood, and they’re not looking for Mr. Rogers. They’re looking for gold. Real gold, not that Texas tea stuff that the Beverly Hillbillies got rich off of. They want that precious metal everyone rushed out West for. It’s amazing how much worth we put into minerals that come out of the ground, but gold is shiny and pretty, so I guess that’s the reasoning behind everyone wanting it so badly, as opposed to slate or some other basic stone.
Samuel and the other convicts have a lot they have to carry, and they have to transport it from one place to another. If they lose even one ounce of that gold, it’s curtains for the group. They’re escorted along the way because, well, they’re convicts. The prison guards are basically using them as manual labor. The path ahead is treacherous, literally because people will be treacherous toward each other when gold is on the table, and Samuel has a lot in front of him that he has to fight through in order to stay alive. He’s definitely the character you root for.
The supporting cast is mostly names I didn’t immediately recognize except for Austin Amelio, who plays Rankin. There’s also Avi Nash as Singh and Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen as Olson. Russell Crowe’s presence is rather marginalized, as he appears toward the front and end of the film and is gone for nearly the entire midsection when they’re actually traveling with the gold. So if you’re coming for Russell Crowe, and only for Russell Crowe, this might be one of those films that disappoints you. I’m just happy he took a break from doing random European accents or playing yet another person involved in an exorcism, because that seemed to be his brand there for a while.
Ethan Hawke, meanwhile, is following up his amazing, career-best Oscar-nominated turn in Blue Moon and his critically lauded performance in the FX series The Lowdown, which he sadly did not get an Emmy nomination for. But praise. He did get praise. The Weight is very much on Ethan’s shoulders, and he carries it like a beast. He is the best reason to watch this movie and creates such a magnetic performance that he proves yet again that continuing to invest in him, whether it’s Blue Moon, The Lowdown, or The Weight, is worth your time. He creates a likable scoundrel, much the same way revisionist takes on Bonnie and Clyde have romanticized those two instead of treating them like criminal scum. Not saying they necessarily were, but that could also be the take we’ve given them.
Hawke immediately romanticizes Samuel as the good-guy criminal, the Andy Dufresne of this gang, the one you’re rooting for and hoping gets out at the end regardless of whether anyone else does. They are weirdly joined by a female inmate, Anna, played by Julia Jones, making me wonder again what exactly is up with this prison. Remember, I didn’t have audio description, so I did think it was weird when suddenly a woman had snuck away from the prison camp to join up with them. But I guess without her, the film is basically a bunch of dudes. Just a lot of guys walking and thinking about screwing each other over one way or another, bit by bit, piece by piece.
I’d imagine this is one of those films where the cinematography probably looks pretty good. It’s an outdoorsy type of movie, so if cinematographer Matteo Cocco was able to capture this in any sort of meaningful way, it’s probably something that stands out. I could even see people mentioning the costume design, again, based on the period. But at the end of the year, when I’m compiling my hundreds of films together, the one thing I’ll remember is Ethan Hawke. Not really anything else. And already in 2026, I think we’ve had more defining performances in Lead Actor, so The Weight probably isn’t going to be entering any serious awards consideration.
That doesn’t mean you can’t watch it. Remember, this is a Vertical film. You have a very limited amount of time to watch this with audio description. And my official decree from up on high, down to you peasants reading this review, is that if you are an Ethan Hawke fan, you will be rewarded by taking the time to go to the theater and listen to this with audio description before that audio description track vanishes, never to be heard again. He is good in it. Even without audio description, he was good in this movie. That is not up for debate or question.
However, having just seen him in Blue Moon, it’s really hard for me to say he topped himself because I think Blue Moon was such tremendous work for him, such a phenomenal performance, that it’s not going to be surpassed so easily or so quickly. The Weight is definitely a victory for Ethan, but the film can feel a little bit like a slog at times because it plays very much like an A-to-B movie, almost like a quest in a video game. It’s possible having audio description would have elevated my score slightly, but really Ethan Hawke already did most of the work necessary to get this into Fresh territory. The supporting cast around him doesn’t stand out to me in any meaningful way, except for Julia Jones because she’s the lone woman in this group. Russell Crowe has very little screen time in general, but he does a good job with what he has.
The Weight is not a heavy movie. However, it is a film Ethan Hawke is fully responsible for carrying. And carry it, he does.
Fresh: 6.6/10
