Samuel Murphy (Ethan Hawke) was a single father of a very young girl in 1933, four years into the Great Depression. He had no job, he lost his apartment, and in the desperate struggle to find a roof over their heads he was attacked by thugs and eventually arrested and hauled off to a hard labor camp in the back county of Oregon. Knowing that his daughter, in the custody of the state, would soon be adopted away from him, he was desperate.

When widespread bank failures during the depression made people lose trust in paper money and hoard gold, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6102 on April 5, 1933. It required U.S. citizens to surrender their gold coins, bullion, and certificates to the Federal Reserve for $20.67 per ounce, in an effort to control the economy by removing gold out of private hands. After the seizure, the price of hold was raised to $35.00 per ounce.

There were many gold mines in Oregon, and people tried to steal or smuggle gold away before the government could take it from them.

Murphy and several of his companion inmates were coerced into smuggling a fortune in gold from one mine across impenetrable wilderness in rural Oregon. With fortunes of gold in their backpacks, and lawlessness all around them, things quickly got out of hand.

The Weight has a powerful soundtrack. Sometimes it was not music, but just loud noise to create tension and pressure. The music and noise were so loud, I wished I had brought my earplugs (which I use at every concert). Loud it was, but it was also immersive and intensive and it helped the movie. I walked out in a daze, glad I didn’t have to live through the Great Depression, aware of the fragility of our economic system, empathetic to the love of a father for his daughter and the length to which he will go to save her. The movie left me stunned for a while, not sure what to think of it.

My wife gave it two stars, I am upping it a bit.