padraic mckinley

Somewhere in the overlap between William Friedkin’s 1977 action thriller “Sorcerer” and Kelly Reichardt’s 2020 Pacific Northwest pioneer indie “First Cow” lies Padraic McKinley’s directorial debut “The Weight.”

“Sorcerer” is about a group of fugitives driving a load of dynamite across the jungle; “The Weight” follows a group of Depression-era convicts transferring gold through the forest. “First Cow” is about the sweetness of friendship and French pastries in the wilds of Oregon during westward expansion; “The Weight” is about the corrupting forces of capitalism. McKinley’s movie marries the instincts of modern indie filmmaking with a New Hollywood ethos, while bringing an authenticity to the details of the period.

We follow the story of Murphy (Ethan Hawke), a World War I vet and single father in Eugene, Ore., struggling to provide for his daughter, Penny (Avy Berry), three years into the Great Depression. After an unfortunate run-in with the law, Murphy finds himself in a prison labor camp, building a road and trying to shorten his sentence so he can get out before his daughter is adopted by a new family.

Opportunity presents itself in Murphy’s foreman, Clancy (Russell Crowe), who takes a shine to him after he fixes his car and devises an ingenious way to remove boulders without dynamite. Cuddly but dangerous, Clancy makes a seemingly simple offer to Murphy: He and three friends can earn their freedom if they hike a load of gold out of a mining camp on the eve of President Franklin D. Roosevelt confiscation of all gold stockpiles.

The how and why details aren’t that important; the story is merely that the prisoners have to get from point A to point B through a rugged forested terrain, under the watch of two intimidating chaperones, Amis (Sam Hazeldine) and Letender (George Burgess). A mining camp servant, Anna (Julia Jones), joins their group as a runaway and while it seems a straightforward task, the arduous and brutal journey is one that is liable to turn these convicts into runaways.

Murphy’s gang weren’t really outlaws to begin with — he was imprisoned for defending his daughter from some undercover cops, while Singh (Avi Nash) was arrested for his associations with socialism. Olson (Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen) was part of a group going after a judge for seizing Scandinavian farms, while the most hardened criminal among them is Rankin (Austin Amelio), who grew up in juvie. But in order to survive the woods, Murphy will have to dig deep into his wartime past and rely on his own skills and smarts to make out it out intact.

McKinley pours his craft into authentically representing the era, from the perfectly worn denim of the costumes to the refreshingly real and craggy faces of the cast (and thank goodness Hawke and Crowe are respectably aging into their character-actor looks). The Bavarian forest beautifully stands in for 1930s Oregon and cinematographer Matteo Cocco balances ’70s-inspired slow zooms with composed, high-contrast images that hark to early 20th century styles of photography. A score by Latham and Shelby Gaines balances discordant, atonal tones with suspense-driven sound design that captures the creaking noises of the forest and the concealed dangers it holds.

McKinley stages a few bullet-sweating sequences of peril, including a particularly brutal transport of gold bars across a crumbling rope bridge and an underwater accident exacerbated by floating logs. Both are nail-biters but you can’t help but think he could have pushed it even further. Tonally, the film is torn between wanting to be brutally bleak and offering some kind of hope for Murphy and his precocious, adorable daughter.

When “The Weight” leans into its nasty, mean and grim moments, it gets at something that seems closer to truth than the saccharine resolution we fear is coming. It seems like McKinley wants to deliver a crushing blow, but then feints at the last minute, opting for a more optimistic kind of fantasy.

Politically and culturally, what “The Weight” speaks to is as ugly as the violence that occurs in the mud and fog of the forest. But it ends on an oddly cheery note that doesn’t square with what we’ve seen. It’s a cutesy ’70s nod that feels more “Smokey and the Bandit” than “Sorcerer.” The bolder choice would have been to commit to expressing the despairing lessons of this world. We want to see these characters changed by what they’ve experienced, even if it’s dark. We want to see them actually carry the weight.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.