Ethan Hawke trades prison bars for past roles as The Weight opens
Ethan Hawke spends his new film behind bars, playing a widowed father forced to choose between his daughter and a gold heist.
The film is The Weight, directed by Padraic McKinley, which arrives in cinemas on Sept. 18, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Hawke stars as Sam Murphy. Russell Crowe plays Warden Clancy.
Murphy is a World War I veteran and a widowed single father caring for a young daughter during the Great Depression, the long economic downturn of the 1930s. A misunderstanding involving two corrupt police officers lands him in prison. The sentence is long enough that he risks losing custody of his girl.
Inside, Clancy makes him an offer. Help steal gold before President Franklin D. Roosevelt's executive order forces Americans to hand it in to fight deflation, and walk out early. The price is freedom. The cost could be everything else.
The production did not shoot in Oregon, where the story is set. It filmed in the Bavarian Forest in Germany, standing in for the 1930s Oregon wilderness, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The historical drama was also named among the titles for the Berlin Film Festival's 2026 lineup, according to Variety.
The role caps a career that Hawke has been revisiting in interviews. He recalled filming Training Day cruising around Los Angeles with Denzel Washington in a 1979 Chevy Monte Carlo. He was 19 when he filmed White Fang in snowy Alaska.
He also nearly boarded a very different ship. Hawke was in contention for the role that went to Paul Bettany in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World from 2003. That film was directed by Peter Weir, who had earlier directed Hawke's breakout performance in Dead Poets Society from 1989.
Horror fans get a thread of their own. Hawke has said he dreams of a Black Phone trilogy, according to Entertainment Weekly. Of the sequel idea, he said, "I thought it took real balls." He added, "I can't think of another sequel that inverts the main character."
What makes this stand out is the contrast. One project puts Hawke in a Depression-era cell. The other brings back his masked killer. For longtime followers, it is a favourite actor working at both ends of the dial.
