Betrayal is disheartening and debilitating, unless it’s happening to someone in a movie. Then, it’s diverting. For example, The Weight is a tension-loaded drama that follows a criminal expedition into the wilds of the Pacific Northwest in the 1930s and hinges on shady people depending on each other in extreme circumstances. As for The Musical, it’s a pointed comedy about a romantic triangle and duplicity within the faculty of a suburban middle school.
‘The Weight’
In a career spanning more than 40 years, Ethan Hawke has achieved unquestioned success as a leading man and character actor, earning a bundle of awards and five Oscar nominations to date. Lately, he’s found a fertile middle ground between both categories of acting, as seen in the 2025 biopic Blue Moon, which featured his richly textured performance as the legendary, self-destructive Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart, and in the neo-noir TV miniseries The Lowdown, where he plays eccentric Tulsa, Okla., bookstore owner and crusading citizen journalist Lee Raybon. Now, Hawke taps into his exceptional range for The Weight, a taut period thriller that casts him as Samuel Murphy, a dedicated single father desperate for work in Eugene, Ore., during the Great Depression.
A mechanic and World War I veteran, Samuel is kind, resourceful, and sadly down on his luck in 1933. After he and his young daughter Penny are evicted from their apartment, Samuel is violently rousted by some plainclothes policemen and swiftly arrested for punching one of the cops who manhandled him and threatened his child. Samuel is separated from Penny when he’s convicted of the assault and sent to a prison camp in the mountains. There, he’s assigned to a crew that breaks rocks and builds roads in conjunction with a gold mining operation. The shrewd and ruthless Warden Clancy, played by a slickly sinister Russell Crowe, is in charge of the camp. Because Samuel’s sentence won’t be up before Penny is lost to him in the foster care system, he agrees to undertake a dangerous mission for Clancy in exchange for early release.
The task is to secretly transport a large cache of gold bars from the mines to a distant location to avoid having the bullion scooped up by the government. It’s a considerable trek on foot, requiring Samuel and a handful of his fellow prisoners to traverse an unforgiving wilderness with weighty gold-laden backpacks slowing them down and Clancy’s armed deputies chaperoning the trip. Along the way, the smugglers are joined by Anna (Julia Jones), an American Indian woman on the run from a repressive past. Freedom and perhaps a golden reward await them if the gambit pays off. At least, that’s what Clancy has promised.
As expected, the journey is an extremely harsh one, beset by natural threats and human treachery. Anyone that the group encounters in the woods might be aware of the gold and covet it. On top of those problems, Samuel has to deal with potential betrayal from the other convicts, including the conniving Rankin (Austin Amelio), the immigrant firebrand Singh (Avi Nash), and the young, reticent Olson (Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen), not to mention the abuse handed down by the vicious guards accompanying them on the trail. Clancy has made it clear that if any of the gold is lost in transit, the deal is off, and there will be reprisals. In other words, the stakes are high for all involved.
The Weight, written by Matthew Booi and Shelby Gaines and directed by veteran film editor Padraic McKinley, is a tale of survival, whether it’s enduring the economic brutalities of a perilous time or surmounting physical challenges and emotional trauma. On the visual side, the sylvan setting is beautifully shot by cinematographer Matteo Cocco with Bavaria standing in for the Pacific Northwest. But what truly elevates it is Hawke in the role of the reluctant hero, personifying Samuel’s bravery, determination, adaptability, responsibility, and parental devotion. With such achievements as Blue Moon, First Reformed, Boyhood, The Northman, and Before Sunrise already in his filmography, it’s fair to say that Hawke has struck gold again with The Weight.
The Weight is currently in theaters.
‘The Musical’
Realizing that there’s no way to salvage his broken romance, a jilted lover decides to do the next best thing and undermine his ex-girlfriend’s new relationship. That’s the basis of The Musical, a tidy, borderline nasty comedy set in a Southern California middle school. Tony-winning stage and screen actor Will Brill plays Doug, a sad sack wannabe playwright who is stuck teaching drama to suburban theater kids. With the fall semester starting, Doug hopes that he can rekindle the love affair that he fumbled with Abigail, an attractive art teacher at the school. His chances don’t look good. Abigail has already moved on. Making matters worse for Doug, she’s now dating his arch enemy — the school’s good-looking and insufferably smarmy Principal Brady, played by ageless pretty boy Rob Lowe in note-perfect casting. With Gillian Jacobs (TV’s Community) as Abigail opposite Brill and Lowe, the comedic ménage à trois is in good hands.
Brady covets a Blue Ribbon school rating and brags that it’s almost a done deal. Feeling demeaned and betrayed whenever he sees Abigail with Brady, Doug decides to sabotage the principal’s aspirations by putting on an original and highly inappropriate school musical instead of the promised production of West Side Story. Because members of the Blue Ribbon panel are invited to the show, Doug is going to pull out all the stops to humiliate Brady. Doug’s drama students — portrayed by a precocious mini-ensemble of adolescent thespians — are complicit, and the resulting extravaganza is a howler. Although Doug, Brady, and Abigail are self-centered and a little off-putting, that doesn’t make them any less funny. Scripted with an edge by Alexander Heller, The Musical is Giselle Bonilla’s second directorial effort. If it had been a final exam, they would have both passed with honors.
The Musical is currently in select theaters.
