Parents' Guide to The Weight

An expertly crafted, old-fashioned adventure tale with simple, sharply drawn characters and clear, tense storytelling, this action thriller will leave viewers gripping their seats and breathless. With The Weight, Padraic McKinley makes his feature directing debut after decades spent as an editor (Igby Goes Down, The Express) and directing TV episodes (Fightworld, Debris), and it was worth the wait (no pun intended). Everything here feels carefully laid out and meticulously planned. An early sequence involving a rickety rope bridge induces sweaty palms. A river-crossing begins with a foreboding thundercrack noise before a barrage of approaching logs appears. And scenes in which a character is quietly dispatched occur without music, in a lightning storm, where only flashes of nefarious activity are shown.

Even scenes of walking feel dynamic thanks to the film's expert framing and economic dialogue. (A discussion about the misunderstanding of socialism feels particularly relevant.) Only a fight sequence that occurs later in the movie feels chaotic and confusing, and a scene in which a character steals a car from people viewers never see is a bit odd. The Weight is curiously grim-faced, which seems to work for it; suffice it to say that the title refers to more than the gold in the characters' heavy backpacks. While it's not exactly a breezy swashbuckler, it's most certainly a nail-biter.