Sundance movie review: 'The Weight' crafts harrowing tension

The Weight, which premiered Monday at the Sundance Film Festival, is a harrowing thriller. It joins The Wages of Fear and The Revenant amongst great treacherous terrain adventures.

In 1933, Sam Murphy (Ethan Hawke) is arrested and separated from his daughter, Penny (Avy Berry). At a labor camp, warden Clancy (Russell Crowe) offers Murphy a job for early release.

Murphy chooses Singh (Avi Nash), Olson (Lucas Lynggard Ti¸nnesen) and Rankin (Austin Amelio) to join him. The job is transporting gold across Oregon before President Roosevelt confiscates it or looters find it.

The four carry gold bars on their back, which guards Amis (Sam Hazeldine) and Letender (George Burgess) value more than the men's lives. Anna (Julia Jones) follows them from the mine and letting her tag along seems safer than sending her back to tell the miners where they're going.

The forest is full of dangerous terrain made even more menacing by the heavy bars on their backs. A rope bridge across a chasm won't hold all the gold so they have to heave it bar by bar across before they can walk themselves.

It's never just one thing. The group must cross a river without losing any bars, and then a fleet of logs comes downstream at them.

Even before the gold trek, The Weight is thrilling. Murphy proves himself to Clancy by orchestrating the removal of a boulder in the labor camp.

The boulder scene is dynamic, following Murphy around the rock while the score intensifies. The stakes of that are real too: either he moves it or they don't get a day off.

Terrain isn't the only danger on the trek, though. In fighting, especially with the guards, and injuries force more tough decisions.

Writer/director Padraic McKinley filmed the adventure on location in Bavaria, which doubles for Oregon.

Even between intense scenes, the clanking sound of bars jangling reminds viewers what's at stake.

Murphy is never tempted by the gold because Penny is far more valuable to him. Since he is the only one looking out for the other men, he is a natural leader too. Even Rankin, the loudest mouth of the bunch, proves his mettle when it counts.

The Weight used to be the kind of man-against-nature movie Hollywood made. Now it needs Sundance as a launching pad, but it confirms the value of giving audiences an old-school, real world adventure.

Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.