Weapons: Josh Brolin’s Waxed Work Jacket
Josh Brolin in Weapons (2025)
Vitals
Josh Brolin as Archer Graff, housing contractor and concerned father
Maybrook, Pennsylvania, Spring 2025
Film: Weapons
Release Date: August 8, 2025
Director: Zach Cregger
Costume Designer: Trish Summerville
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Following the breakout success of his directorial debut Barbarian (2022), writer-director Zach Cregger returned with another provocative and unsettling horror film: Weapons, released this August.
Set in the fictional small town of Maybrook, Pennsylvania (but filmed just outside Atlanta), the film opens with a chilling mystery—seventeen elementary school children from the same classroom inexplicably flee their homes into the night at exactly 2:17 a.m., leaving only one—the quiet and withdrawn Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher)—returning to class the next day. What unfolds is a nonlinear descent into communal fear, grief, and suspicion, as the town struggles to comprehend the incomprehensible and, in doing so, turns inward with paranoia and blame.
On its surface, Weapons plays as a darkly comic horror thriller, but beneath the genre trappings lies a sharp allegory about how communities process trauma—or fail to, demonstrating the all-American patterns of reactionary hysteria that have cascaded over centuries from the Salem witch trials to post-9/11 nationalism and COVID-era scapegoating. Weapons particularly sparked interpretation on a broader commentary on America’s systemic failure to protect children as—rather than confronting the deeper institutional issues like gun violence, trafficking, or the opioid crisis—communal trauma habitually devolves into a blame game, lashing out at convenient targets from violent video games to a troubled new teacher.
The scapegoat here becomes the latter: Justine Gandy (Julia Garner), a recently hired teacher with a complicated past but no clear connection to the children’s disappearance. Suspicion still grows, fueled by the town’s need for closure and driven by panicked parents like local contractor Archer Graff (Josh Brolin), whose son Matthew remains among the missing. As his desperation increases, Archer ultimately pairs with an unlikely ally to channel his pain into action.
What’d He Wear?
Weapons‘ most memorable costumes are somewhere between Aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan) layered in her polyester pastels and the matching Mickey Mouse T-shirts that Marcus (Benedict Wong) and his husband wear when settling in for seven hot dogs on a Saturday afternoon.
Beyond those more Halloween-ready fits, I love how costume designer Trish Summerville appropriately dresses Archer Graff as a blend of the suburban everyman and a man of action; his wardrobe is what you’d expect of a Rust Belt contractor, compiled of hardy, comfortable workwear from reliable brands rather than fashion houses. During the community meeting where he leads the accusations hurled toward Justine, Archer wears a canvas Carhartt work vest with a blue quarter-zip over a T-shirt.
The next day, after a traumatic dream featuring a floating AR-15 digital clock and the terrifyingly tacky Aunt Gladys, he awakens with a refreshed motivation to look for solutions rather than just a scapegoat. Thus, for the final act of Weapons, Archer’s wardrobe is a bit more hero-meets-housing contractor, anchored by the asme Flint & Tinder Waxed Trucker Jacket that Pedro Pascal wore on The Last of Us (which takes on an additional layer of sartorial significance when considering that Pascal was initially cast as Archer Graff!)
The jackets are manufactured at Fairfield Textiles in Bridgeton, New Jersey, from a densely woven 7-oz. sailcloth cotton which is then coated in Martexin Original Wax for weather resistance and durability. As of 2025, Flint & Tinder offers these in a range of earthy shades, with Archer wearing the same “field tan” shell from The Last of Us. These are typically blanket-lined for additional warmth in a yellow-on-charcoal striped napped polyester through the body and sleeves, though Archer’s jacket appears to have had the lining removed.
There are six antique-finished nickel branded donut-style tack buttons up the front, matching the single button fastening each cuff, the waist adjuster tabs, and the mitred-corner flap over the pointed-bottom patch pocket on the left chest. There are also two vertical-welt entry hand pockets on the sides.
Long favored by English outdoorsmen, waxed outerwear has been having a renaissance thanks to the range of waxed trucker jackets on Yellowstone, the Rogue Territory Ridgeline jacket worn by Daniel Craig in his final 007 film No Time to Die, and the Flint & Tinder’s back-to-back appearances in The Last of Us and Weapons.
You can read more about the Flint & Tinder waxed jacket appearing in Weapons at GQ and Huckberry while also shopping for your own here.
Archer’s blue heavy twill work-shirt has seven dark-blue recessed plastic four-hole buttons up the front placket and on the cuffs. The two patch pockets over the chest each close with a single-button flap, and a blue-threaded pen slot is sewn through the left pocket flap.
Archer layers the work-shirt over a dark slate-gray cotton short-sleeved pocket T-shirt, aged to reflect the broken-in comfort of many wears and washes. Ss we see when he’s stripped down in the hospital, this is unfortunately not the same “I don’t know shit about fuck” graphic tee he wore on set, celebrating his co-star Julia Garner’s famous line from Ozark. Under this T-shirt’s crew neck, he wears a silver necklace with a stamped pendant that Gladys briefly grabs during the climax.
Archer’s dark-blue cargo pants were made for work, not fashion, though they follow a more flattering silhouette than most cargo pants as the legs slightly taper toward the plain-hemmed bottoms. These flat-front trousers have belt loops, side pockets, back pockets, and a trio of flapped cargo pockets across both thighs: a pleated pocket on the right thigh and two over the left thigh, with the higher positioned pocket flapped at a rearward angle; all three cargo pockets have flaps that close through a single brushed metal snap.
True to his rugged profession, Archer wears work boots that have already developed considerable to the brown oiled leather uppers by the time he finds himself pulling himself out of a pool of spilled gasoline. These moc-toe boots are derby-laced through metal eyelets with braided brown-and-gold taslan laces and built with Goodyear welt construction atop black rubber Vibram® lug soles.
Archer’s accessories are all characteristically minimalist and utilitarian. The wedding band on his left ring finger is made from a matte gunmetal, and his all-black watch is fastened to the same wrist on a black rubberized strap. For more detail-oriented work like consulting local maps to triangulate where Matthew and his classmates were running toward, he pulls on a set of black acetate-framed rectangular reading glasses.
How to Get the Look
Josh Brolin in Weapons (2025)
Archer Graff pulls together a rugged, tonally coordinated ensemble built from trustworthy workwear staples—sturdy moc-toe boots, durable chore pants, and hardy flannel—anchored by his well-worn waxed Flint & Tinder jacket for a fit that’s as functional as it is authentic.
- Tan waxed sailcloth cotton trucker jacket with 6 nickel “donut” tack buttons, horizontal chest and back yokes, patch chest pocket (with button-down flap), vertical welted hand pockets, button-tab waist adjusters, and squared single-button cuffs
- Flint and Tinder Waxed Trucker Jacket
- Blue heavy cotton twill work-shirt with front placket, two chest pockets (with single-button flaps), and button cuffs
- Dark slate-gray faded cotton short-sleeved T-shirt with crew-neck and breast pocket
- Dark-blue cargo pants with belt loops, side pockets, back pockets, right-thigh cargo pocket, two left cargo pockets, and plain-hemmed bottoms
- Brown leather moc-toe derby-laced work boots with Goodyear welt construction and black lug soles
- Black acetate-framed rectangular reading glasses
- Matte gunmetal wedding band
- Black wristwatch on black rubber strap
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie. I also recommend reading Griffin Schiller’s excellent Awards Daily review that describes how Weapons “explores the core of communal trauma.”
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