‘The Weight’ Berlinale Review: Ethan Hawke Anchors a High-Tension 1930s Survival Tale

What an extraordinary year it’s been for Ethan Hawke. A performer beloved by audiences and seen in hundreds of films, yet never quite granted full recognition for the depth of his talent, he’s capped it off with an impeccable trifecta: one that began at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2025 with Blue Moon—for which he’s now Oscar-nominated—continued with his electrifying turn as a rebellious journalist in the series The Lowdown, and now closes with his portrayal of a defiant inmate in The Weight. These are three very different projects demanding entirely different things from him: he moves from showy characterization to a role—like the one in the series—that feels almost tailor-made, and finally to a kind of failed 1970s action antihero in a film that openly pays homage to that tradition. In all three, he’s terrific. In all three, he commands attention.

The Weight is a pure-blooded survival thriller, the kind that was everywhere in the 1970s (Deliverance, Sorcerer, Straw Dogs), and it draws heavily from the cinema of filmmakers like John Carpenter and Walter Hill. In the strictest sense, it’s what’s known as a mission movie: a film in which a character—or, as in this case, a group—must complete a complex task while contending with familiar and unfamiliar enemies, with nature itself, with the authorities, and with one another. It’s all packaged with intensity, stripped-down dialogue that rarely serves anything but the action, and an almost devotional respect for the minimalist rules of B-movie craft. Because of some structural weaknesses, it never quite becomes the masterpiece it might have been, but it’s the kind of popular, accessible, intelligent, adult-oriented cinema that’s all but vanished.

In the depths of the Great Depression, Murphy (Hawke) ends up in prison after finding himself homeless and getting into a violent altercation with plainclothes police officers while searching for a place to stay with his daughter. He’s incarcerated, his daughter left alone in a care home, and Murphy needs to get out quickly before she’s absorbed into the adoption system and permanently separated from him. Inside, he joins a labor crew in hopes of reducing his sentence. There, Murphy—an exceptionally skilled mechanic—catches the eye of Clancy (Russell Crowe), who oversees the operation and soon recruits him for a dangerous assignment.

Without getting into specifics, Murphy and a team are tasked with transporting four sacks of gold bars through the forests of Oregon (the film was actually shot in the woods of Bavaria, Germany), in order to keep them from being requisitioned by the federal government during a time of crisis and scarcity. It’s a somewhat illegal operation, but Murphy and the others must take it on if they hope to negotiate shorter sentences—or even freedom. The group that accompanies him is a varied one—some more affable, others more politicized, a few distinctly volatile—later joined by an Indigenous woman, all under the watch of two aggressive guards.

And that’s what The Weight is about: inhospitable journeys, physical ordeals, struggles against nature (a bridge that won’t support the load they’re carrying, a river with a will of its own), against those pursuing them, and, above all, against one another, as suspicion grows within the ranks. Of all the physical damage the characters accumulate throughout the film, most comes from beatings and fights among the prisoners themselves. Given the mission’s questionable nature, none of them are entirely convinced the authorities will honor what they’ve been promised.

Crowe’s role is brief—he appears at the beginning and the end—but he lends the undertaking a gravity that resonates throughout its two-hour runtime. Director Padraic McKinley doesn’t attempt to reinvent the logic or format of a type of film that was already being made in much the same way back in the days of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, directed by John Huston, another key reference point. Each character embodies a different “type,” there are intimate monologues, the hint of a romance, scenes of sexual abuse—only the regional accents distinguishing each member of the unit seem to be missing.

But within that fairly standard package of bodies in motion and at risk, The Weight works remarkably well. One could read into it a social dimension tied to the humble origins of most of the characters in relation to the sheer quantity of gold they’re handling, yet McKinley’s emphasis lies elsewhere: in crafting a high-tension adventure and suspense narrative set nearly a century ago. A pivotal car chase between two vintage Ford Motor Company Model 18s delivers as much—if not more—intensity than anything a modern Fast & Furious sequel might offer. That’s where the film’s impact lies: a survival thriller in which money becomes the rabbit everyone is chasing. Some, to keep it. Others, like the good old Hawke—sorry, Murphy—to win back his beloved daughter.