Padraic McKinley

Desperate to save what is left of his family during the height of the Great Depression, a battle-scarred World War I veteran is hired to smuggle a fortune in gold across a hundred miles of impenetrable wilderness in the Pacific Northwest.

This week, we shoot the shit about Padraic McKinley's 2026 gritty old-school historical survival thriller, The Wait.

directed by Padraic McKinley.

He is a TV director.

He's directed on TV shows like Kingdom, Fight World, Debris.

That was that late Saturday viewing.

This is called The Wait, directed by Padraic McKinley.

I think that's – he's mad Irish.

I think that's

Padraic.

Padraic McKinley.

It's Baldrick McKinley.

Okay, perfect.

This even made me wanna give Exorcist II a second chance.

Next up this week, we have an interview with Padraic McKinley, director of the historical drama, The Weight, which stars Ethan Hawke as a prisoner who undertakes a dangerous assignment to transport a load of gold on his back.

Think Wages of Fear on foot, and you're halfway there.

Jamie Graham spoke to McKinley recently, and here is their conversation.

Staying in the theaters, I went to see The Wait this past week.

This is the new film directed by Padraic McKinley, written by Matthew Boy and Shelby Gaines, and starring Ethan Hawke.

It takes place in the 1930s.

It is a movie with balls, and I say that because it's got, like, this energy and this, like, in your face bravado to it.

Russell Crowe is, is sort of the boss of his prison work unit.

Ethan Hawke and a bunch of other characters get caught up in a heist in order to get their freedom, and it was really tense, and it was really well-made.

This is Padraic McKinley's first film.

He was an editor before this.

Uh, this film produced, uh, uh, uh, premiered at Sundance earlier this year and was bought by Vertical, who was distributing it.

It was directed by Padraic McKinley and written by Matthew Boy and Shelby Gaines.

And it stars Ethan Hawke, Russell Crowe, Julia Jones, Austin Amiello, and Avi Nash um and some other folks so um Now, I'm just going to say right at the beginning, I saw this at Sundance.

I wrote the review for it at Sundance.

It's an original story and screenplay written by Matthew Bowie, Leo Sherman, and Matthew Chapman.

And the director is Padraic McKinley.

And it follows a man who is desperate to save what is left of his family, and during the height of the Great Depression in rural Oregon, he is hired to help smuggle a fortune in gold across 100 miles of impenetrable wilderness.

And from the get-go, we're introduced to a character by the name of Samuel Murphy, who's played by Ethan Hawke.

And Ethan Hawke comes off probably a bit more like John Voight's characters during some of the movies that he did in the 60s and 70s.

I hope Ethan Hawke doesn't end up like John Voight in a lot of ways, but that's another story for another time.

But this is a particularly terrific film that Padraic McKinley directed reminiscent of directors before him like Robert Altman and John Borman.

And it is as thrilling as it is... a film that tells an amazing story, which is why The Wake gets my rating of a knockout.

Critics are fans of this Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe-led drama as it has a fresh rating of 92% on the Rotten Tomatoes.

The critics' consensus says, quote, The Wait turns a stripped-down tale of desperation into a gripping, hard-hitting thriller elevated by Ethan Hawke's magnetic performance and Padraic McKinley's assured direction.

End quote.

So, sounds good.