Russell Crowe's Best-Reviewed Movie in 27 Years Officially Removed From 1,500 Theaters

Two new movies featuring Russell Crowe were released in September, and ironically, the one that received worse reviews turned out to be the bigger hit. Both films are two-handers, with Crowe sharing the screen with Jacob Tremblay in his hit Netflix film, and with Ethan Hawke in his theatrical underperformer. The Oscar-winner played a Harvard professor who conducted scientific experiments on a young Ted Kaczynski in Unabomber, which has amassed more than 50 million views so far. The psychological drama holds a poor 25% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. Crowe's theatrical release, on the other hand, has emerged as his best-reviewed movie since 1999.

A Western drama that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, the movie grossed around $3.5 million in its domestic run. This puts it in the very bottom tier of Crowe's films. While the actor has certainly experienced major box-office success in his career, he has spent the last decade or so starring in relatively smaller-scale films. A few of them, like the World War II drama Nuremberg and the horror movie The Pope's Exorcist, were able to break out at the box office and deliver solid results. Most of Crowe's recent films, however, have found an audience only after debuting on the home-video market.

Russell Crowe's New Western Has the Making of a Home-Video Hit

+3

His new Western drama, The Weight, is probably headed down the same path. The movie debuted in more than 1,500 theaters domestically on September 18, but as of this past weekend, it is playing in only 21 theaters nationwide. The Weight holds a "Certified Fresh" 94% score on Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, "The Weight 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." This is the best Rotten Tomatoes rating that one of Crowe's movies has received since Michael Mann's acclaimed thriller The Insider, which now holds a 96% score. The film is likely to find an audience as time passes, especially with McKinley having recently been announced as the director of the upcoming Sicario 3.